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Copyright, jqo4, by Colliei-'s M'cekly. 

Soldiers of the Fourth Army marching into Liaoyang after the Russian 
— evacuation. 



WITH KUROKI IN 
MANCHURIA 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



The Vagabond p^^o 

The Ways of the Service . . 1.50 
In the Klondyke 1.50 



WITH KUROKI IN 
MANCHURIA 



BY 

FREDERICK PALMER 



ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY 

JAMES H. HARE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1904 



THE LiBRARV OF i 
OONGRtSS 

Two Copies i^ieceived 

my 19 »904 I 

Oopyright tntrv 

CLASS o- Mc. mi 
/ /^ cJf 

COPY A. 






Copyright, 1904, by 
COLLIER'S WEEKLY 

Copyright, 1904, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Published, November, 1904 



TROW DiRECTORy 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



(fi 



H 



TO THE JAPANESE INFANTRY, SMILING, 
BRAVE, TIRELESS; AND NO LESS TO THE 
DARING GUNNERS WHO DRAGGED THEIR 
GUNS CLOSE TO THE ENEMY'S LINE OVER- 
NIGHT, THIS BOOK, WRITTEN BY ONE WHO 
WAS WITH YOU FOR FIVE MONTHS IN 
THE FIELD IS ADMIRINGLY DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. When Komura Sent for De Rosen ... i 

II. The Old and the New 7 

III. The Night of Victory 19 

IV. To the Front ! 26 

V. Overtaking the Army 34 

VI. First Operations at the Yalu .... 47 

VII. Crossing of the Yalu 55 

VIII. Battle of the Yalu 67 

IX. After the Yalu — Hamatan 83 

X. The Owner of the Battle Ground . . 99 

XI. A Tribute to the Dead 108 

XII. Three Divisions on Three Roads . . .117 

XIII. First Attack on Motien Pass . . . .130 

XIV. Second Attack on Motien Pass . . . .150 
XV. A Right AVing in the Air 176 

XVI. Battle of Tiensuiten 186 

XVII. After Tiensuiten 207 

XVIII. A Correspondent's Life in Manchuria . 219 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XIX. A Letter in Camp to Nippon Denji . .232 

XX. LiAOYANG — Fighting Our Way into Position 249 

XXI. LiAOYANG — The Artillery Duel . . . .266 

XXII. LiAOYANG KUROKI CROSSES THE TaITSE . 283 

XXIII. An Important "Little Hill" .... 294 

XXIV. KuROPATKiN Retreats 308 

XXV. Aftermath 318 

XXVI. The Strategy and Politics of the War . 336 

XXVII. Sayonara 355 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Soldiers of the Fourth Army marching into Liaoyang after the 

Russian evacuation Frontispiece 

Landing troops in the harbor of Chenampo 30 

Train of Korean coolies, loaded with rice for the army, passing 

through the North Gate of Ping Yang 38 

Timbers for bridging the Yalu being carried along a road which 
had been screened with cornstalks because it was in sight of 
the enemy's position 50 

Field hospitals on the river sands of the Yalu after the Japanese 

stormed Ku-Uen-cheng 76 

The twenty -eight guns captured from the Russians at Hamatan 

parked in a compound in Antung 96 

General Kuroki, commanding the First Japanese Army, in front 

of his headquarters at Antung after the victory of the Yalu 100 

A Buddhist service and military honors at Antung for Russian 

officers who fell at the Yalu 108 

On the road to Liaoyang . 118 

Some Russians of a party of observation wounded and captured 

by Second Division skirmishers 122 

A halt by the riverside for lunch and rest on the advance from 

Feng- wang-cheng to Lien -shan-k wan . . . . . . 126 

General Okasaki on the steps of the Temple of Kwantei the 

morning of the first attack on Motien Pass 134 

When the base hospital was distant and immediate opera- 
tion was important, it was performed at the field dressing 

station ,,,,.. 142 

ix 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Searching party of Japanese burying Russian dead on the field 

after repulsing the attack on Motien Pass 148 

Showing redoubts, gun positions, and artillery roads built by the 

Russians to hold the valley at Bunsurei ...... 170 

The Japanese battery in the kowliang which the Russians did 

not locate at the battle of Tiensuiten 202 

Col. Baba of the Thirtieth Regiment and officers of his staff 

watching his men storming the hills before Tiensuiten . . 204 

Battlefield of Tiensuiten. Gun pits at the left were those of the 
"saddle" battery where the Russian General Keller was 
killed 214 

A veteran of the Twelfth Division, who had marched from Seoul 

to Liaoyang and fought in five battles 242 

Typical mountain work — a line of skirmishers advancing under 

cover of a rib to charge a trench . 252 

Japanese burning their dead in the rain after the hard fight of 

August 26th 256 

Infantrymen fording the Tang River after driving the Russians 

from the hills on the opposite bank 264 

Japanese dead who fell in holding a trench at a critical point in 

the First Army's flanking movement before Liaoyang . 270 

The precious field telephone, belonging to a battery of artillery, 

is well protected from damage by shell -fire 296 

Sept. 4th, before Liaoyang. The white points on the hills 
across the Taitse are the shells fired by the battery in the 
foreground 310 

Kuroki's guns crossing the Tang River 322 



LIST OF MAPS 

FACING 
PAGE 

The Actions on the Yalu 67 

On April 29th, Kuroki had his whole army massed at Wiju 
behind the hills of the river bank. Once a lodgment was 
effected on the opposite shore, he was ready to cross and 
operate with such rapidity that his fresh reserves in pursuit 
after the battle captured twenty -eight guns at Hamatan. 

The Six Days' Action around Liaoyang 249 

On Sept. ist, the Russian frontal line fell back on Liao- 
yang. On the 2d, the First Army had occupied Hayentai 
(the hill marked 2). On the 3d, the Russian frontal line 
was in full retreat over the four bridges across the Taitse 
and its forces were pressing the First Army as they went. 

Routes of March and Principal Actions of the Four Japanese 
Armies 343 

The First Army (one division landing at Seoul and two divis- 
ions at Chenampo) marched through Korea while the more 
northerly harbors were still ice-bound. With the Third 
Army before Port Arthur, the Second followed the railway, 
and the Fourth went through the range from Takushan. 



WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 



WHEN KOMURA SENT FOR DE ROSEN 

Rumors instead of hours have marked the pas- 
sage of the days of waiting. You tightened the 
mainspring for to-morrow's lot when you wound your 
watch at bedtime. This afternoon came one unHke 
the others, definite in shape, electric in transmission 
from lip to lip, having the magnetic force of truth: 
^^Komura has sent for de Rosen. It has come.'' 
Though the words were from your servant, you 
believed them as readily as you believe in an earth- 
quake shock that you feel. To-night the whole 
nation knows that negotiations are at an end and 
bloodshed is about to begin. The years of expect- 
ancy have culminated in the decisive step. The 
patient Government has at last given the word. 

Where are the crowds? Why is there no cheer- 
ing ? Doubtless more people are watching the bulle- 



2 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

tins in London and New York than here. "Think 
of Piccadilly or Broadway on such a night!" ex- 
claims the foreigner. In Japan there is little to see, 
little to hear. There is everything to feel. Two 
theories which you at home may have from this de- 
scription you would never have here. There is no 
apathy; there is no doubt or fear. Instead of going 
abroad to gather in public places and shout, the 
Japanese go to the houses of their friends and sit 
over their hihachis (charcoal burners) and talk little 
— very little. They know that there is to be war, and 
that is enough. It is the war that they have prayed 
for — almost a holy war. 

Throughout the land to-day and yesterday a 
shower of pink tickets has fallen. Each ticket 
called a man out of a kimono into a tunic; out of 
getas into military shoes. It said, according to Jap- 
anese logic: "The Mikado has given you life; now 
he calls upon you to give it back." There is no weep- 
ing at the farewell. I saw a reservist parting with 
his family at the railroad station to-night. He came 
in with his little boy, olive- skinned, round-faced, 
smiling — a live Japanese doll of three years — thrown 
over his shoulders. The women folk formed the 
inner circle, the men the outer. In the centre of 
such a group, the soldier in his Occidental uniform 



WHEN KOMURA SENT FOR DE ROSEN 3 

seemed to belong to a world apart. There was no 
weeping; for years they had expected him to go, 
and now he was going. He smiled, and they smiled 
at the parting — a variation of that Japanese smile 
which says: ''We are sad and try to show that we 
are not by being merry." 

Yesterday there were no signs of preparation; 
to-day there have been signs of preparation every- 
where for those who would see them. On the pa- 
rade-ground, and in other public places, officers 
with little note-books, hundreds of coolies, and loads 
of timber suddenly appeared. They settled down 
to their task as if it were the routine of every day. 
There was little shouting, no seeming hurry, no 
oaths snatching order out of confusion. The order 
was in the officers' note-books, in lines of ideographs 
running up and down the pages. With the rapidity 
of circus tents, rose long lines of sheds for the horses 
of a division. There was not even the hammering 
which is the bass of the hackneyed ''din of prepara- 
tion." The girders and the supports were bound 
together by the deft wrapping of straw ropes. Every 
board and every stick seemed to have its place, and 
those in command to know just where the place 
was. At the same moment that the coolie ants began 
their work, officers went from house to house to 



4 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

provide for the billeting of soldiers, and more lines 
of ideographs were made in note-books. 

In a few hours the soldiers — dropping their peace 
tasks wherever the pink tickets found them — began 
to arrive, and settled down in their quarters, quiet, 
welcome guests of quiet hosts. Why go out and 
cheer when you may sit over the hihachi and smile 
with the heroes-to-be, who, augustly condescending, 
have deigned to honor a poor domicile with their 
presence ? 

At the Russian Legation the gates are closed. No 
Japanese stops in passing. The native attendants 
in the little lodges on either side of the massive grill- 
work, with its gold-crowned double-headed eagle, 
press their faces to the windows querulously. The 
thin columns of smoke rising from the chimneys 
form the only other sign of life. Within the silent 
structure are the sole beings in all Japan who de- 
sire Russian success. Baron de Rosen and the 
attaches, awaiting their departure, might well wish 
for a crowd and some signs of demonstration to 
break the sinister quiet. 

"War has come!" the foreigner may say to a 
Japanese. 

"Yes," with a smile — as if to imply, "Will you 
augustly condescend to excuse the war for coming?" 



WHEN KOMURA SENT FOR DE ROSEN J 

"And Japan is going to fight hard and win 
victories?" 

"Yes," with the same smile, quizzical and mean- 
ing — meaning one knows not what to the map of 
Asia. 

The click of the getas on the stones seems itself to 
be in a minor key, so few people are abroad; the 
jinrikisha men, huddled in their blankets at their 
stands, knock the ashes out of their tiny pipes and 
start homeward. The little shops close no earlier, 
remain open no later. Their workers are busy with 
their tasks rather than with discussing war. Yet 
they welcome the news, and they would give their 
all for the cause. By midnight you look the length 
of the streets without seeing the flight of a single one 
of the varicolored lanterns which the runners hold 
on the thills of the little man-carriages. Tokio is 
going to bed at the usual hour. But what thoughts 
may be passing behind the paper windows with 
their checkered lattice-work, through which the 
lights are no longer shining, is as far from our 
knowledge as what is passing in the office of the 
General Staff. 

"Scared, aren't they?" asked a foreigner who 
arrived in Japan to-day for the first time. "Why 
don't they get out their bands?" 



6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

"Study the Japanese smile," residents warned him. 

"But this httle people in their paper houses against 
the big Russians! Haven't they awakened to what 
they have undertaken, and aren't they worried? 
Why, they are beaten at the start by their own 
showing!" 

"Study the Japanese smile," again the residents 
warned him. 

In other lands the withdrawal of Ministers means 
the playing of fortissimo passages with the brasses. 
On another historical night, thirty-odd years ago, 
the Paris crowd was crying, "On to Berlin!" In 
Japan it is pianissimo with the violins, which means 
more than the brasses. There is no shouting of 
"On to Manchuria!" yet. The hush of the long- 
expected come true, the issue narrowed to the ex- 
tremity of a bull's-eye, the plain realization of this 
day, this hour, being a landmark in history, have 
outweighed superficial impulse. We who are in 
Tokio to-day have witnessed a racial phenomenon. 
Associating the thought of rabble with a noisy mouth, 
one may feel how by extremes the very jinrikisha coo- 
lies have taken on an air of senatorial dignity. The 
man new to Japan only wonders, or thinks he is not 
getting what is advertised; others realize that their 
study of the Japanese smile has only begun. 



II 

THE OLD AND THE NEW 

This morning, after Tokio had slept one night 
on the fact of actual war, it was my good fortune 
to have an hour's talk with Field Marshal Marquis 
Yamagata, the man behind the Cabinet, who, more 
than any other, is responsible for the step Japan 
has taken. The appointment with him had first 
been made for a week ago. When the day set 
arrived, the Genro were hastily summoned to one 
of their urgent sittings, and in the language of his 
secretary, his Excellency was ^'very busy." From 
the moment when negotiations were broken off the 
field work of the Elder Statesmen was finished ; that 
of the army had begun. One of them, with true 
samurai courtesy, signified his leisure by not forget- 
ting the request of a foreigner. 

The drive to the Marquis's house took me to the 
farthest suburbs of the city. We passed many small, 
two-wheeled army carts drawn by ponies, and the 
still smaller ones drawn by coolies. Splashes of 
red of the stripes of Imperial Guardsmen's new caps 



8 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

or trousers showed through crates that were piled 
high in contrast to the compact Kttle boxes that 
contained ammunition. The reservists from out- 
lying districts were on their way to town. With 
each one were his nearest friends. The road be- 
came a procession of groups. If your servant is 
absent in Japan, the death, the sickness, or the mar- 
riage of a "friend" calls him. It is a land of groups 
of friends. All the cronies of his age see the recruit 
into the army, and see the recruit become reservist 
back into it again. The parting with his wife or 
his mother or his sweetheart is usually at the door- 
step. 

If you looked away from the soldiers and the 
policemen on the beat, at the shops with their slid- 
ing screens pushed back, making windows and doors 
and show-windows and show-room into one; at the 
ideographic signs and the garb of the daily workers, 
either near by or in the fields, the vista still had 
everything in common with the Japan of forty years 
ago, which knew no world but her own. 

It was strange that on this morning of all morn- 
ings I was going to see the man I was. He had 
grown to manhood under a regime as different 
from ours as that of the Chinese from the ancient 
Greeks. As a youth, if he had cut off his queue, 



THE OLD AND THE NEW 9 

he would have been debased from his rank as a 
gendeman. If he had attempted to leave his native 
country he would have suffered death, which the 
Shogun thought a fit punishment for a crime against 
the isolation which was the gospel of the land. 

Yamagata's first experience of war was as a feudal 
swordsman clad in armor, who fought according to 
the Japanese counterpart of the etiquette of the 
Knights of the Round Table. Clan warfare, the only 
kind known, was then the privilege of the few, like 
private yachts. A gentleman born (a samurai) 
alone had the right to bear arms. Until you know the 
chivalry, courage, pride, and stoicism that that word 
stood for, you can in nowise understand how it is 
that this suddenly transformed Oriental people to- 
day cross the seas to fight on its own ground the 
Russian Empire. A farm laborer in those days was 
as far from the right to bear arms as a longshoreman 
is from a bishopric. Yet this Yamagata has lived 
to lead one army, whose soldiers were composed of 
all classes and armed with modern rifles, in a vic- 
torious foreign war; and he may yet take the field 
in another and infinitely greater one, when the forty 
waiting transports (improvised from steamers) shall 
carry an army of three hundred thousand men to 
Korea and Manchuria. 



lO WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

If I had gone to see him forty years ago — when I 
could not have gone unless I had been a Japanese, 
and wore a queue and two swords — we should have 
sat on mats with our legs crossed. Profound would 
have been our bows, delicately worded our compli- 
ments. To-day, I drove into a tree-studded yard 
that was entirely Japanese, surrounding a stone and 
stucco building which was distinctly Occidental. 
(The Japanese have found our houses more comfort- 
able — if less artistic to their taste — than their own. 
Their sylvan effects they most wisely retain.) I was 
ushered into a reception room that might be that of 
a well-to-do person with distinction of taste at home. 
Yamagata has in this age the versatility and the 
classic simplicity of the soldier and statesman in one 
that we associate with another age. A field mar- 
shal by right of his victories in the field; one of the 
five Elder Statesmen; the Mikado's counsellor in 
civil as well as in military affairs, and the head of the 
political coalition responsible for the present Cabinet, 
he stands for the policy and the administration that 
brought on the war. He is not of the school of radi- 
calism, but of the old school of Japan ; a Tory rather 
than a Whig. The manners of other days in Japan 
are reflected in him as the manners of other days in 
America are in an old-time Southerner. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW ii 

I have said that he was one of the five Elder States- 
men; the five who are known as the Genro. Their 
part is advisory in a land which follows the precept 
of old men for counsel and young men for action. 
All were leaders in the reformation. In the play and 
counterplay of politics, everyone has known at some 
time each of the others as an ally. To-day for the 
first time, so far as their front to the world goes, 
they are united — for the war. In the weeks past 
they have held many secret meetings whose minutes 
were reported to the Imperial ear alone. Out of 
their candid discussions has come the Imperial con- 
clusion and, finally, the Imperial word. For the 
Emperor is the one who decides. He listens and 
listens, as unchanging of face as the Buddha at 
Kamakura, and once his determination is made 
known, keeps the faith of ancestral infallibility by 
holding to it. 

Foremost of the Genro is Ito, purely the civilian, 
purely the statesman, who is criticised for his foreign 
policy as Gladstone was, while Yamagata, the soldier, 
is criticised for his home policy as Salisbury was. 
But Ito is not without chivalric appeal to his country- 
men. It was he who, out of far-seeing patriotism 
and a youthful spirit of curiosity, cut off his queue 
and put aside his samurai sword when the penalty 



12 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

was loss of caste as a gentleman; who went aboard 
a British trading ship and secured passage to dis- 
tant lands when the penalty of visiting distant lands 
was death. Once- in his country house at Oiso he 
told me the story of how the British skipper who 
made an unwelcome passenger callous his soft hands 
on ropes and sails found a samurai game. For his 
sacrifice he learned where the foreigners' power lay; 
and queueless, swordless, he returned to his country 
with the message — meaning so much to Russia — 
that the only way to keep the foreigners out was to 
use the foreigners' weapons. That was forty years 
ago. 

Now, Japan not only uses foreigners' weapons, 
but makes them ; and the laying of the extensive new 
trolley car system of Tokio is not interrupted by 
the war. 

At the great court dinners of this feudal, this ever 
impressively unique state, Ito has a little table near 
the throne, among the princes, by himself. In the old 
days the Mikado resided in state at Kyoto and the 
Shogun at Tokio ruled Japan. Now the Mikado is 
in Tokio and Ito is his right arm. After him comes 
Yamagata; and then, in order, Inouye, who accom- 
panied Ito abroad, and Matsukata. They hold no 
office. They are sages superior to the Cabinet, 



THE OLD AND THE NEW 13 

which is a conservative Cabinet — ^Yamagata's. Nei- 
ther Oyama, the head of the army, nor Ito, the head 
of the navy, is one of them. But their turn has 
come. The Genro decided that war was best. Oyama 
and Admiral Ito made war. 

**^ *^ ^l' ^l' 

*t« *l^ ^^ ^^ 

It was Yamagata the country gentleman, the 
statesman, not Yamagata the soldier, whom I saw 
this morning, this slight, elderly man in a frock coat, 
with his bronzed face, his high cheek-bones, his good- 
humored eyes, and hair turning gray, in his person 
• bringing one nearer to the old Japan, and in his mili- 
tary power to the modern Japan, than any other 
man. His secretary, Mr. Nakayama, who inter- 
preted for us, is a Harvard graduate. But he is 
young and born to this regime ; he has about him the 
air of the Occident. The Marquis belongs at once 
to this regime and to the one before. As we sipped 
our ceremonial tea, he talked of the war which was 
only sixteen hours old; the war on which he had 
staked his reputation; the war which meant to his 
people more than their political future — their future 
as individuals. He spoke of it as simply and as 
calmly as if war were an e very-day affair. Nothing 
in the shrewd face showed that he had been under 
continuous strain for weeks. 



14 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

I spoke to him of the two things which made me 
marvel most. The first was the organization into a 
united, thoroughly disciplined army of classes which 
formerly had never associated; of clans that had 
always been at the sword's point; of the ^^ groups" 
of friends ever ready to become factions. One might 
as well have expected to make a Pole a good Russian 
within forty years after the conquest, as to make a 
unit out of the Japanese of 1850. The army, ab- 
sorbing all clan rights, seems to-day one man and 
one mind, keeping its secrets as one. How was this 
brought about? I wanted to hear the explanation 
from the Field Marshal who had seen the army rise 
from the first companies that threw away their bows 
and arrows for rifles. There was the Oriental dep- 
recation of self in his answer, which left me knowing 
little more than before. He seemed a little surprised 
that the success had been so manifest to foreigners. 
It had been very difficult and it was still very diffi- 
cult, according to a field marshal's high ideas of disci- 
pline, to make Japanese officers and men realize the 
spirit of military unity as they should. 

'^The spirit of corps that keeps military secrets 
seems perfect," I suggested. 

^'Not entirely," he said gently. ^'Some will talk 
when they ought not to. Our newspapers, too, are 



THE OLD AND THE NEW 15 

far from being as careful as they should be. Rather 
than know everything and know it fully and accu- 
rately in due time, their principal ambition seems to 
be to know the idea before anyone else, and publish 
it first. They are not yet enough advanced to be 
discreet." 

I wondered what a city editor would think of the 
Marquis's view. 

This morning, the greatest of newspaper mornings, 
all that appeared was the official statement of the 
negotiations, with Japan's reasons for breaking them 
off. There was nothing about the mobilization, or 
what troops were here or being moved there, because 
the Government had given strong hints of what it 
would and would not permit to be published. The 
great reason for the rise of a united army lies in the 
inherent respect of the Japanese for law, for the 
Emperor, for the nobility, and for the Emperor's 
counsellors. 

To my second question, the answer was more en- 
lightening to the foreigner who comes to Japan as 
the Japanese go abroad, bristling with question 
marks. 

'^If you will look at the geographical position of 
Korea you will see that it is like a poniard pointing 
at the heart of Japan," said the Marquis. " If Korea 



i6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

is occupied by a foreign power, the Japan Sea ceases 
to be Japanese, and the Korean Straits are no 
longer in our control. Our public men are of many 
parties, not of two only, as are yours in America. 
Our Cabinets are the product of coalitions, which, 
for the time being, seem to His Majesty and the legis- 
lative power best to serve the interests of the country. 
Foreign policy is a thing entirely apart. In the con- 
sideration of Korea and Manchuria, all men of all 
parties needed only patriotism to realize the single- 
ness of our interests. Whatever Cabinet was in power 
continued the policy of its predecessor, and the policy 
of all on a question which put the very life of our 
nation at stake. So our unchanging attitude from 
the outset of our disagreement with Russia has been 
natural and inevitable. In its negotiations the Gov- 
ernment has patiently kept the hope of peace in view. 
No agitation prejudicial to calm deliberation has 
been permitted. A society organized against Russia 
was suppressed. Our demands were clear and un- 
faltering. We had to deal with an enemy whose 
methods were those of evasion and hypocrisy, to 
whom delay meant advantage." 

This war completes the chain of Japan's calcula- 
tions. It represents the third period in the forward- 
ing of her high ambitions. First, when foreign fleets 



THE OLD AND THE NEW 17 

opened her ports by force, she set out to make those 
internal reforms and to organize an army on modern 
principles which should guarantee her safety. As 
a monument of the initial step, the old forts built 
after Perry's coming still stand in Tokio Bay. The 
diplomacy of such men as Yamagata, with the con- 
structive home policy of Ito, went hand in hand with 
military organization, in which the fear of India's 
fate was the ^'battle-cry of clans to sink their differ- 
ences." But still the foreigners in the treaty ports 
lived under their own laws. 

The second step was the Chino- Japanese War, 
when the world expected to see the giant crush the 
midget under his thumb, and instead saw the midget 
raise the flag of victory over the giant's belly. It was 
then, by the weapons with which place is won, that 
Japan forced herself into a position of power among 
the family of nations. Ex-territoriality ceased; for- 
eigners are now under Japanese law. The Japan- 
ese people, thanks to the combination of Russia, 
Germany and France, had to see the territory which 
they had won by their blood fall to the lot of Russia's 
"glacial approach." 

The third period is at hand. Its task is commen- 
surate with the reward it offers. By arms, Japan 
must make room across the seas for her congested 



1 8 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

population, with the prospect of becoming one of the 
greatest of world powers. It shows how long human 
life may be in the changes and the deeds it may 
compass, that the samurai before me had lived 
through the two periods to help precipitate the third. 
Yet the explanation is not so difficult. A civilized 
race was simply transformed from fighting with 
swords to fighting with small-bore rifles and battle- 
ships; from heralds to newspapers; from hand to 
machine looms. 



Ill 

THE NIGHT OF VICTORY 

Yesterday the Japanese lanterns were tele- 
scoped; to-night they are alight; to-night Tokio 
hears only of victory. All day the men who sell 
the extras have been hurrying through the streets, 
their cries drowning the decorous tinkle of their 
little bells. Bulletins, the size of a sheet of note- 
paper, have been sweetmeats to the public, whose 
stomach could not have surfeit of such news. This 
we do know: The cruiser Variag and the gunboat 
Korietz are wrecks at Chemulpo, and Admiral 
Togo has dealt a telling blow at Port Arthur. Much 
more we hope, wanting to believe every happy rumor 
that ink makes on paper and sends broadcast with 
clarion voice — price, one sen. 

The Japanese does not cheer until he has won. 
To-night the population of the town seems twenty 
times what it was the night war began. Tokio, hav- 
ing something to be proud of, opens its doors and 

shows its head. The little Buddhist images, with 

19 



20 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

far-off, subtle smiles, wake up and blink. The 
paper-windowed houses that husbanded doubts 
and fears and the tense expectancy of a people who 
think of their Emperor's fortune before their own, 
send their occupants forth, if not to merry-making 
at least to walk up and down. Streets that were dark 
last night dance with globes of yellow light to-night. 

The Japanese lantern does not belong in a land 
where you read from left to right horizontally, but 
to a land where you read from right to left perpen- 
dicularly. The lantern goes with the people, their 
houses, their costume, and their manners. You 
must come to Japan to understand the lantern; you 
must be in Tokio on the night of victory to realize 
that it is a living thing. 

In columns of twos and threes — an ill-lighted 
city serving a pictorial end — winding in and out 
through the streets ran the yellow balls of light, 
clear-cut against the darkness, while under them 
was the roar of song and cheer. They went to the 
Admiralty, and from the steps of the big building 
of European architecture, the Minister of Marine 
made them a speech. All this was Occidental. 
The foreigners' interest lay farther on when the 
parade, with its crest of moons, passed across the 
moat and through the double gates that open at 



THE NIGHT OF VICTORY 21 

the corner of the palace enclosure into the park 
that faces still other gates through which the state car- 
riages pass to the most exclusive of courts. 

Across the length of the park the lantern-bearers 
formed in close order. Every face was turned 
toward the palace. The lanterns were raised high 
as the ''Banzais!" rang out, ''Dai Nippon banzai! 
Dai Nippon banzai ! Banzai, banzai, banzai ! ' ' The 
dim light showed the students of the higher schools 
in their neat-fitting Western uniforms — they who 
had missed fighting for their beloved country by 
being born three or four years too late. The best 
that they could do was to split their throats in the 
cold, moist night air. At their heels, in the freer 
garb of hakamas, were the students of the university, 
with their future of developing and civilizing the 
lands that the navy and army should win. 

''Isn't it pretty near time that the Emperor showed 
himself?" a foreigner asked. All faces were turned 
toward, all eyes were looking toward, a wall of dark- 
ness. Out of it was visible only the white sides of 
one of the buildings in the enclosure. 

If this had been St. Petersburg, and the Russians 
had won, we can imagine how the Czar might have 
appeared in a doorway for a moment, under a blaze 
of light. That would be a part of the mise en scene 



22 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

for that land ; a part that would receive the approval 
of David Belasco. Japan is different — always differ- 
ent. This is an Emperor whose ancestors have sat 
on the throne from time immemorial. If Palestine 
were to-day a free Jewish nation, and the Jews an 
inherently warlike people who had never known con- 
quest, the descendant of Moses, who sat on the throne, 
would mean to them what their Emperor does to 
the Japanese. The services and the surroundings 
of divinity hedge him around. The house in which 
he lives is not in sight of the park. He could not 
see the dancing lanterns that leaped skyward with 
the cries of "Banzai!" If he had wished to show 
himself to the people, there was no way. The peo- 
ple cheered him as an abstraction; yet a living ab- 
straction to whom they intrust the direction of their 
personal affairs. 

While Tokio rejoiced. Baron de Rosen was pack- 
ing his trunks. His going had more than one pa- 
thetic side. He was personally fond of the Jap- 
anese. Like the French Ambassador in Berlin in 
1870, his information, leaving inclinations out of the 
question, made him a peace man. Whether or not 
he, too, had informed his country of the enemy's 
preparedness, and been scoffed at for his pains by 



THE NIGHT OF VICTORY 23 

his over-confident superiors, history may not yet 
relate. Weeks ago, when reports came from Port 
Arthur that Admiral Alexieff was convinced that 
there would be no war, people here wondered how 
he could so far misunderstand Japanese diplomacy. 

Japan began hostilities of her own initiative. She 
carefully chose the hour of her first offensive blow. 
She may have expected to catch Russia unawares, 
but there is no reason why the Russian should have 
permitted her to. Japan played precisely within 
the letter of the law. Russia had for years made 
capital out of promises. Japan made capital out 
of sudden, decisive action. 

For months before his departure the negotiations 
had been taken entirely out of de Rosen's hands. 
He was merely a messenger who carried letters 
from his Government to the Foreign Office, and, 
saying, *'Your Excellency, I have the honor to pre- 
sent — " he was gone. Aside from his official worries, 
he suffered the acutest pain from an ear affection. 
It is a saying in the diplomatic service that the 
legate to a country which declares war against his 
own is usually shelved. De Rosen may receive a 
small post ; it is unlikely that he will ever have another 
important one. With the knowledge that his career 
was closed, half ill, he had to wait four days in 



24 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

miserable loneliness in that massive brick Legation 
building which is now closed for — How long ? 

The news of the destruction of the Variag and the 
Korietz at Chemulpo, of the occupation of Seoul, of 
the vital injuries to two battleships and a cruiser at 
Port Arthur, coming bit by bit, were brought to him 
while he was yet in the enemy's land, waiting help- 
lessly on the date of the departure of the French 
steamer from Yokohama. While Japan's swift suc- 
cesses fairly electrified the air, his fellow Ministers, 
bound to avoid any reference to the war, had to pay 
their farewell calls when he knew that the actual sym- 
pathies of most of them were with the enemies of his 
country. From the palace where victory reigned 
came valuable presents in token of a royal adieu, 
without malice, borne by polite messengers to the 
house of defeat. Finally, the day of his going was 
the Japanese Fourth of July. 

The train for Yokohama which the Baron chose 
went at nine the evening before the departure of the 
steamer. As the carriage passed out of the Legation 
gates, a faint murmur rose from the bystanders — a 
murmur of curiosity rather than assault. The police 
escort was scarcely needed. Tokio, which has no 
slums, seems to have no mobs. The crowd which 
banked the open space that the police made at Shim- 



THE NIGHT OF VICTORY 25 

bashi Station was wholly quiet. Not alone the Le- 
gation people were there to bid him once more hon 
voyage^ but many Japanese officials awaited his ar- 
rival in a room upstairs. It was an incident of the 
bureaucratic system which grinds to the same fineness 
on all occasions that the Ministers had to buy their 
platform tickets in due course. 

From the station itself the crowd was entirely ex- 
cluded. The train was the regular one going at that 
hour, and the usual stream of getas went clicking 
over the concrete to the second and third class com- 
partments. Two or three minutes before the gong 
was sounded, the Baron, looking ill and worn, lead- 
ing, the Legation folk and the Japanese officials fol- 
lowed him to his compartment, where, after the 
Russians had entered, the others paused, and then 
bowed as the train pulled out with no guard except 
a few soldiers in the compartment ahead of the 
Baron's. A carriage met him at the Yokohama 
station, and the police saw him aboard the Yarra, 
which was to bear him to Europe. The next morn- 
ing a few near friends were on the pier. He smiled 
to them as the steamer drew away, taking him out of 
a land that he liked and that liked him. 



IV 

TO THE front! 

Never was parting guest more happy to go, never 
was parting guest more heartily and sincerely sped. 
With the correspondents of the first contingent actu- 
ally away, the hopes of the second and the third rose 
to the dignity of expectations. They gathered at 
Shimbashi Station with tin horns and gave the chosen 
few three and a tiger. For over two months some 
of us have waited for official passes to join the Jap- 
anese army in the field. Now that we have the 
treasure it is not much to look at — only a slip of 
paper which would go into the average- size envelope. 
By rights it should be on vellum, with marginal 
decorations of storks standing on one leg and an in- 
scription of summa cum laude for patience in flour- 
ishes. Our thoughts, however, are not on such 
trivialities. They are entirely on how much each 
little pass will permit us to see. 

"The Japanese were absolutely prepared for this 

war and all possible contingencies save one," said a 

26 



TO THE FRONT! 27 

secretary of legation in Tokio. ^'They overlooked 
the coming of a small army of correspondents repre- 
senting the public opinion of two great friendly 
nations." 

Nearly a hundred Europeans and Americans, used 
to entirely different food and conditions of life from 
the natives, turned a hotel into a barracks, and with 
persistent address asked for privileges from the For- 
eign Office. In time such a force, each representing 
a competitive property, can wear even the Japanese 
smile of politeness down to a studied grimace. We 
had and have the conviction that the army would 
preferably have had neither correspondents nor at- 
taches in the field. The lives, the millions of dollars, 
the national aims at stake were not ours; we 
came only by courtesy as foreigners. A correspon- 
dent kills no Russians; he may, if indiscreet, give in- 
formation to the enemy. But the Foreign Office and 
even a higher power said that we must go. The time 
and manner of our going was perforce left to the 
General Staff. It was not a new situation in the 
world ; that of a decision by the Government with ex- 
ecution left to a department. And the General Staff 
kept saying, ^^very soon, " and bidding us be patient. 

While tableau after tableau of success was unfolded 
by land and sea, and the rumor-mongers of the 



28 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

uncensored, unknowing, madly imaginative China 
coast met the demands of the press which wanted a 
battle every day, the men who wanted to see war 
in the field instead of through the bubbles of gossip 
over Eastern bars, strode up and down the corridors 
of their hotel prisons, among tents, saddles, and kits, 
like so many melancholy Danes — as if each were the 
Hamlet of the play. 

At last the rampant curiosity of the spoiled chil- 
dren of the press, grateful for small favors, may feed 
itself on the sight of a Japanese soldier really march- 
ing toward an enemy in a disputed land. 

Now that we are started, we wonder what lies in 
store for us in this campaign of an Oriental power in 
a hermit land. The time of our return is shrouded 
in the mystery of the vicissitudes of a great war which 
has scarcely begun. The departure from Shimbashi, 
when an Anglo-Saxon hurrah broke the long record 
of Banzais for departing troops, the parting of a dozen 
foreigners from their American and European friends, 
reminded us again of the romance and the pictu- 
resqueness of our position. There was never a war at 
all comparable to this, and never a war which drew 
so many foreign correspondents. The uncertainty 
of our position, the uncertainty of the conditions 
under which we shall live, brought a havoc of buying 



TO THE FRONT! 29 

at the last moment on the part of men who have 
studied their requirements in the field while they 
waited. We have everything, from postage-stamps 
done up in oiled paper to tool-chests the size of a 
pocket-book. 

The small islands, for the most part barren and 
rocky, which pepper the sea near the Korean coast- 
line, have been a blessing to the Japanese in this 
war. They provide cover from storms for the nu- 
merous fleet of small transports which three months 
ago were doing merchant service. Our own trans- 
port and our experience were typical. The Sumi- 
noye Maru, of a thousand tons burden, is thirty- 
three years old. She was bought in England when 
she was already past the Ai age limit of Lloyds. 
Ever since she has been running out of Hokkaido. 
She is as shipshape as she is patched. Her Japan- 
ese skipper, who speaks English excellently, and 
with more than English politeness, served his ap- 
prenticeship before the mast of a sailing vessel out 
of Glasgow. The result is high tribute to his teach- 
ers. He cares for his ancient charge with the nice- 
ness of a family physician, wooing ten knots out of 
her rheumatic engine. 

When a nor'wester came up, soon after we left 



so WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Chemulpo, he ran her behind one of the accommo- 
dating islands and dropped anchor. When the sea 
calmed he went out again, and this morning he 
brought us to Chenampo, that first port where the 
correspondent blessed with an official pass issued 
in Tokio is permitted to land. Chenampo has been 
and is, so far as we know, the main point of landing 
both for troops and supplies north of Chemulpo. 
The settlement that looks out upon the harbor is 
Japanese and well isolated from the two near-by 
Korean villages by more than distance. It is 
the outpost which the Japanese flag is following. 
From a trading and fishing hamlet the few rows of 
Japanese houses have risen to the dignity of officers' 
quarters for an army of invasion. Until we came 
there was one foreigner who spoke some English — 
the German collector of customs. For weeks sup- 
plies and soldiers have been forwarded into the 
interior with no other spectator except the Japanese 
and the Koreans. The newcomer is as much at a 
loss for details of fact as a Hungarian just arrived 
in New York is to the intrigues of Fourth Ward 
politics. 

From the steamer we could see the new unpainted 
barracks and storehouses which rose with the magic 
that forethought and preparedness command soon 



TO THE FRONTl 31 

after the first transports dropped anchor. Beyond 
the piled stores, beyond the artillerymen scattered 
in the streets or taking their horses for exercise, there 
is nothing of the commotion to be expected of a great 
point of military debarkation. 

In an hour in Chenampo you get an impression of 
the coming and passing race, clearer perhaps than you 
will have weeks hence. Here the little men are of 
the future and the big men of the past. The two 
races are as distinct in type as Germans and Moors. 
Wherever you see a blue figure on the landscape it is 
Japanese, wherever you see a white figure it is Korean. 
The Korean never washes his body and only washes 
his clothes occasionally. You are in a land of coolies 
and corrupt ofiicials. All spend most of the time 
in the street. The race itself is characterless, list- 
less, without color. Through the mass rides one 
little Japanese artilleryman or walks one little Jap- 
anese infantryman, and the natives look at him with 
a kind of stupid, preoccupied curiosity. The smart 
visitor in uniform came only yesterday, clearing 
the seas first of a European enemy. He could almost 
walk under the arm of one of the big Koreans who 
erectly, patronizingly, saunter the street's length and 
back again, pipe in hand. Yet he could clear the 
town by lifting his finger. Giving way to the 



32 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

masterful race, the native, not making even the feint 
of resistance, still retains that stupidly impassive 
dignity. 

'^Let the Japanese come! We still wear white 
and do our hair up in knots on top of our heads, 
and thus you will see we lose nothing." 

The Koreans are as noncommittal about the 
coming of the Japanese as the average American 
about the tribal differences of the Fijians. Men 
and women dressing much alike, in their muddy- 
colored white clothes, with feminine faces unfeminine 
and masculine faces unmasculine, the Koreans seem 
a sexless people, begetting wonder that the race has 
not long ago ceased reproduction. 

Some few — the few who understand — may realize 
the benefits which will result from Japanese occu- 
pation. The foreigner who lacks conviction need 
only go from the orderly and cleanly Japanese to the 
filthy Korean village. The ofhcer commanding, 
who received us at his headquarters in a dwelling 
more modest than that which with true Japanese 
politeness he placed at our command, was Oriental 
in his deprecation of how little he could do for us 
and Teutonic in the exactness of his arrangements. 

The arrival of the foreign correspondents is more 
interesting to the Koreans than the arrival of the 



TO THE FRONT 1 33 

Japanese. There were Japanese here before. As 
for the big noses, there was only the Collector of 
Customs, and now there are many others equally 
strange. The inn, whose lower floor some artillery 
officers vacated on our behalf, is such as every trav- 
eller in Japan knows well. The song of my type- 
writer has awakened the interest of the lady of the 
house, who is originally from Nagasaki. She has 
opened the sliding door, and, dropping on her knees 
with a courtesy to the correspondent (sitting on a 
blanket roll with a provision box for a table), has 
pointed at the machine and said "Shimbun" (news- 
paper). I told her she was right, and courtesied 
with the type spool in turn. It is a pleasure to find 
such a hostess and such a clean house in Korea. It 
is blessed, when your mission is to see a war, after 
many weeks of waiting in a peaceful capital, to be 
even as far as Chenampo, where patches of official 
blue enliven the muddy white of native monotony. 



V 

OVERTAKING THE ARMY 

Through a land where a civilization only half 
matured and then withered has rotted through gen- 
erations of decadency, where no man understands 
a horse and men take the place of horses, where 
every inhabitant high and low is lousy, where filthy, 
corrupt officials have so long collected all surplus 
profits as taxes that subjects learn to avoid trouble 
by avoiding surpluses^through the sodden, her- 
mit Korea runs a river of new life, to be fruitful 
with consequences that open all the vistas of con- 
jecture and problematic discussion. 

By the old Peking Road — the valley following the 
path of ages of travel — by the same road down which 
the old conquerors came, down which civilization 
was introduced, the Japanese army is moving. Only 
it moves in the opposite direction. For the first time 
since the Romans, the armed mission of a higher 
human organization has gone northward. In its 
wake, with its bulk in mass to strike the enemy, the 
army leaves the stations of its order and cleanliness; 

34 



OVERTAKING THE ARMY 35 

as significant as the clean hospital attendants in the 
ward of sickness. The new may not be ideal, but 
it is so much better than the old as to silence all 
comparisons. 

Two months ago it was the old Korea. What- 
ever happens now, it cannot be the old Korea again. 
The soldier's sudden change of a blow and a day 
has been wrought in the presence of those who have 
worked in the evolutionary way of an evangelist's 
patience and persistence. The river runs by a spot 
where continual drops of water have made some 
impression. In sanitary isolation above the sink 
of the old town (whose ancient, pagoda-topped wall 
has survived to the purpose of holding filth from 
contact with outer clay) are the houses of the mis- 
sionaries of the American Presbyterian Board. 

^ WU *3f %if *1^ «1« 

^* 'I* *y* *l* *l» 5j* 

On the road later I met a schoolmaster fromTokio 
— a reservist serving with the battalion of sappers — 
trudging on very erectly and very sturdily under his 
heavy marching kit. 

"Do you speak English?" he asked. 

The question came like an unexpected wireless 
message from a friend on another ship at sea. 

"Though I was fresh from town life, it was not 
the physical exertion of the private soldier which 



36 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

I found hardest to bear. My muscles soon hardened 
and the sores on my feet soon became calloused. 
The filth and the vermin are the terrible things. 
In Ping Yang I was living in a miserable native 
house when I met an American missionary gentle- 
man who provided me with clean quarters and a hot 
bath" — here his eyes glistened — "like I have at 
home." 

Between travellers there is no bond after lan- 
guage like that of cleanliness. I walked my horse 
for some time beside the reservist and chatted with 
him. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

?|5 ^ *1> •T* »!• ^ 

Now in my travels I have seen many missionaries, 
and there are good missionaries and bad, just as 
there are good and bad blacksmiths and poets. 
Some missionaries become converted to the life of 
the country whose inhabitants they would convert, 
and instead of being isolated heights sink to the stale 
level of heathendom itself; some are proof of the 
old saying that the blood of the martyr is the seed 
of the church. 

The missionaries of Ping Yang are practising in 
truth the precepts of the devotion which called the 
ambition of their theological school days. What a 
town they dwell in! a town where the human being 



OVERTAKING THE ARMY 37 

lives as filthily as only one other animal, the swine, 
will; where the leather merchant lays his fresh pelt 
on the uneven stones of the main street and from 
his doorway watches, through the dirty slits of his 
unwashed eyelids, its tanning by the tread of passing 
feet. 

Yes, before the romance of this ancient city ap- 
peals to me, it must have a sewerage system and its 
inhabitants must submit to immersion in lye in order 
to give soap a purchase. You may search in vain 
among the people of the earth for a satire like that 
which clothes this race in white — a white that is 
hardly ever washed. Long ago, an Imperial edict 
bade them put on white whenever royalty died, and 
royalty died so often that the rabbit folk saved ex- 
pense most loyally by grieving for royalty all the 
time. 

Such is Ping Yang; and in Ping Yang — the Ameri- 
can flag beckoning me from the plain at the close of a 
journey in which, struggling, I had led my struggling 
horse through the mire from Chenampo — I found 
some simple American homes whose occupants pa- 
tiently and hopefully, by example and argument, 
work for the betterment of their fellow-men. With 
them, while our horses rested, I spent an American 
Sunday. Early the next morning we began that 



38 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ride to Kuroki's front which, for the individual corre- 
spondent, is as historical as battles to come will be 
for the world in general. There was no need of 
having the road pointed out to us. It lay where the 
line of coolies passed through the northern gate. 
Like a dotted line on the map they marked the route 
of the army whose food they carried. 

The Hermit Land and the Land of the Rising Sun 
might well be called the Land of the Burden Bearers. 
Korea excels in coolies as distinctly as Japan does in 
lacquer ware or China in tea. Your native can 
carry more and lift or pull less than the average man 
of any other country. Like the hackney horse, this 
human being has literally been bred by generations 
to a special task. The young boy who brings fire- 
wood from the hills has his pack steadily increased 
until he reaches the adult's load at sixteen or seven- 
teen years of age. The muscles that bear are de- 
veloped at the expense of all others. Nourishment 
for his brain, the force for the natural aggressive 
characteristic of the male sex, all go into his back. 
He is as mild and as helpless as a milch cow with a 
load of five hundred- weight. 

If he owns a horse, the local officials may take it 
as a tax, but the local officials now can do no worse 
than to beat him. His capital in the world are the 





1^ 



r "e 



^•** 



u^-.-m^i^'':w^i 







»* « 



^V^A^ 




Copyright^ igo4, by Collier's J I 'cckly. 

Train of Korean coolies, loaded with rice for the army, passing through 
the North gate of Ping Yang. 



OVERTAKING THE ARMY 39 

two crotch-sticks of his packing-frame and the straw 
ropes for fastening on his burden. His one luxury, 
his joy of Hving — his only reason for living, I should 
say — is his pipe, whose little bowl he fills at every 
opportunity. Bending under a hundred and twenty 
pounds, he will trot out of line and back to his place 
in order to get a light at a wayside house. 

Vanity of vanities! I recall when I followed the 
path of the Klondyke gold-seekers to Dawson the 
pride of blue-eyed, fair-haired men, who belong to 
the most individualistic of races, about the weight of 
the packs which they carried over a short summit. 
The rabbit people, without the aggressiveness to say 
that their souls are their own, will carry twice as 
much all day — without boasting. 

The Japanese army has been the easiest master 
that these coolies have ever known. It pays them 
good wages for a stated weight and a stated daily dis- 
tance. The official, lying in wait for their earnings, 
wonders if the new order of things so prolific of graft 
shall not stay his hand. This type we occasionally 
saw striding about gravely in white garments — his 
dignity broken only when the necessity to scratch 
compelled. 

A certain correspondent met one of these gentle- 
men on the road and asked him the distance to a 



40 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

certain town. The official sat down to write it in 
Chinese characters. The correspondent's face re- 
maining blank, the Korean spat in contempt of one 
whose early education had been so signally neglected. 
Now the correspondent had just walked up a steep, 
bowlder-strewn hill; and the strangely named place 
which, ten ri to the rear was only five ri away, was 
not yet in sight. 

From the Korean gentleman came an odor as pene- 
trating as a miasma. The temptation was irresist- 
ible. First observing that his hand was gloved, 
he brought it down with significant force on the top- 
lofty headgear of the Korean gentleman and drove 
bird cage and all fairly down over the official ears. 
The Korean gentleman disappeared over the hill 
with his white garments flying. The fact that prob- 
ably he had never run before in all his life lent to 
the incident poetic justice. Retributive justice would 
consist in first giving all the ruling class, from the 
Emperor down, fifty lashes, then setting them to 
mending the roads and, thereafter, importing horses 
and starting the country anew. 

Most of the women of the land — and all the young 
women — had needlessly fled to the interior and all the 
men had sought the public highway. It was in the 
period of the last days of winter idleness. The fields, 



OVERTAKING THE ARMY 41 

with their last year's rice stubbles, were as yet un- 
turned, and the brook-sides were just beginning to 
show green. If cash payments kept the rural popula- 
tion entranced for another two weeks then the season's 
crops might suffer. By day, the temperature suited 
horse and man — spring air and spring sun. By 
night the cold crept in gradually until at dawn it was 
in your marrow; and above the saddle-bags, out of 
which we must live, we had to tie blankets enough to 
keep us warm. 

We must ride somewhere between a hundred and 
twenty-five miles and a hundred and seventy miles 
before we were on the scene of action. Was the 
army fifty miles this side of the Yalu ? Or was it at 
the Yalu? Would the historic crossing or an his- 
toric attempt at a crossing be made before we should 
arrive? According to the traditions of war corre- 
spondence, we should have dashed. Collins, Hare, 
and I, who kept together, had all the effort of dashing 
with the actual experience of crawling and the sus- 
pense that goes with it. My feelings were worse than 
when the Lake Shore train that was to connect me 
with the transcontinental limited that was, in turn, 
to connect with a Pacific steamer at 'Frisco was 
storm bound. They might wait the steamer — cer- 
tainly they would not wait the battle. 



42 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Carrying us and our food and our warmth, our 
China ponies could make only from twenty-five miles 
to thirty-five miles a day over a highway whose only 
road commissioner had been the traffic of a thousand 
years. We nursed our steeds as an Arctic explorer 
nurses his rations. We dragged them up the hills 
and led them down the other side. And from the 
summit we followed the winding gray streaks through 
the valleys, through the villages toward one with a 
pagoda which stood for a name on the map which 
marked a mile-stone of our progress. 

In the distance the villages were white; but their 
white was like the white of the Korean's garments — 
a pitiful mask for filth which clogged the streets into 
which foul door- ways opened. Our stages of progress 
were reckoned in Chinese li and Japanese ri and in 
kilometers and, finally, in miles (by our own deduc- 
tion). Kilometers are all very well in the abstract; 
but when the Englishman or the American counts 
his steps, he wants to know just how many miles he 
has gone and just how many he has yet to go that 
day. 

A Chinese li is about as long as the native wants 
to make it. The li of Fusan is no relative of the li 
of Gensan, unless by coincidence. If the immemo- 
rial custom has made a distance of five miles thirty li 



OVERTAKING THE ARMY 43 

and a distance of ten miles twenty li in the same 
locality, no resident sees anything illogical in the 
fact. A Japanese ri is definitely about two and a half 
miles. A li is nominally one-third of a mile. We 
asked the Koreans in li and they responded in ri. 
We asked the Japanese in ri and they responded in 
li, while we practised elocution on the enunciation of 
I's and r's. 

Contradictions as to distance were equalled only 
by contradictions as to where the army was and 
what it was doing. The officers guarding transport, 
busy with the affairs of their section, instead of having 
information to give rather expected some from trav- 
ellers who had come from the outside world. Their 
business was not to speculate on the work of other 
parts of the great system, but to be efficient in their 
own. 

At a distance of from fifteen to eighteen miles apart 
were the etappes, or stations, which the advancing 
force left behind. Piles of supplies stood at the door 
of official yamens and even blocked the pagoda's tum- 
ble-down gates of approach. Around them swarmed 
white figures taking up a day's burden, or depositing 
it while they crowded into the houses in layers for 
the night. For all this there was one Japanese word. 
"Hetambo" was the open sesame. The humblest 



44 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

coolie understood it. To the commanding officer 
of a "hetambo" village we commended ourselves 
upon our arrival. As varied his hospitality, as 
varied the quarters at his command, so varied our 
fortunes. 

We had to thank the officers of the army that had 
gone before for warfare on vermin. In some places 
they had remained long enough to cover the filth- 
blackened walls with thin sheets of rice paper. 
Always we felt that we need use only a modicum of 
insect powder. At the '^hetambo" we had what was 
more important than food for ourselves — food for 
our horses. The knowledge at the end of the day 
that there were no saddle-galls was equal to a repast. 

Avoiding my diary, I will yet mention two days 
which stand out black-lettered on our journey, and 
one which stands out red-lettered. The first was that 
of our approach to Anju, when we took a ^' short cut'* 
which proved the longest way around. It was the 
pouring rain which made us dare the economy. At 
the rate of a mile an hour we plunged through the 
mud, and at the end of each hour Anju seemed as 
far away as ever. 

The second was that when we did the longest ride 
of all. At 6 P.M. our ''hetambo" town was three 
miles away, so far as we could estimate; at 8 p.m. 



OVERTAKING THE ARMY 45 

it was five miles away. Darkness found us on a 
treacherous road in a swamp. Finding the way, we 
led our horses till we saw lights, and the lights led us 
to piles of rice in their close-woven straw sacks at 
the familiar pagoda gate. 

But there were mitigating circumstances. The 
officer commanding the "hetambo" extended plan- 
ters' hospitality. Our horses had a big, dry stable 
with plenty of fodder; we had a dry room which had 
been papered; a room that made it a pleasure to re- 
move your boots, Japanese style, before entering; 
and in the morning a cleanly little soldier of Japan, 
all smiles, brought water for a bath — as if he knew 
that bathing was the common ground of friendship 
between our two countries. I bathed; I shaved by 
the dawn's first light; I had slept with my clothes off, 
for the ^'hetambo" had blankets to spare; and I rode 
forth fresh for effort as for adventures. A bath and a 
shave — they give you at least another hour's en- 
durance. 

On the third day we made a short ride. Tifiin 
time found us by the side of a mountain stream which 
ran clear and knee deep over a gravel bed. I looked 
at that and at the white patches — Korean white — 
of my pony. 

"That stream was meant for you and me, Pinto, 



46 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

and in a corner of my saddle-bags I have a bit of soap 
for beast as well as man." 

I undressed Pinto and then myself, and we washed. 
There was the feel of ice in the water. That was so 
much the better. For to bless the natural glow was 
the warmth — noon-day warmth — of April sun which 
dried Pinto's coat, laundry- white now, as he nosed 
his feed-bag and then nibbled green grass; while his 
owner, trying to forget the soiled clothes which he 
must put on, gave himself in nature's dress to na- 
ture's rest as he reclined on the cloth side of a poncho. 
Verily, if it is pleasant, it is also good to wash, espe- 
cially in Korea. 



VI 

FIRST OPERATIONS AT THE YALU 

When I was sixty miles from Wiju I heard that a 
battle had already been fought. Like all rumors, 
the terror of it was that Truth must sometimes ride 
in Rumor's company. With a road free of soldiers 
and thick with lines of straining coolies, twenty — 
thirty — miles I rode, and still the same report, with 
the smile and ''I don't know" of the quartermasters, 
made scepticism grow into anxiety. 

Then I saw on a hill-side artillery horses and near 
by a battery; a mile farther another battery; then 
two more, and how many more I shall not say. I no 
longer asked if there had been a general engagement, 
for there are not general engagements until the guns 
are up. 

Uphill and downhill, into a region less thickly 
populated, where the forests of pine on the slopes — 
"Russian timber concessions" — were being sawed 
into bridge lengths to take a Japanese army into Rus- 
sian dominion, horse and correspondent plodded on 

47 



48 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

till we reached the water-shed and looked afar upon 
the panorama of a mountainous land with a broad 
river flowing through it. Thereafter, young trees 
set thick as a hedge along the road when it ran at an 
angle, with screens of corn-stalks hung overhead 
when it descended directly, told us that we were with- 
in sight of an enemy whom we would not have know 
the number, of our men and guns. 

Nature here has made a natural barrier of empire. 
To Korea and Manchuria, the Yalu is what the 
Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence are to the United 
States and Canada. 

Were there roads, the precipitous banks would be 
an obstacle more than offset by fords higher up 
stream. An army, however, is tied to its transpor- 
tation. Men who climb over untravelled ground 
must have their dinners and their blankets. The 
Japanese must keep to the road, the Russians must. 
Wiju is on the road and so we shall fight there. 

The situation of Wiju is typically Korean, with the 
water from the ascents making a stew of its own filth. 
You go downhill to approach it from any direction. 
Every house is unseen from the Manchurian side. 
A natural wall protects it from one shore at a point 
where the Yalu's waters pass in a single channel. 
Above and below there are islands, low and sandy. 



FIRST OPERATIONS AT THE YALU 49 

This one point in the enemy's Hnes is an unassailable 
centre. 

Opposite on the Manchurian bank rises a bare 
and rocky bluff, "Tiger's Hill," with one high hump 
and one lower, like a camel that is kneeling. A 
winding path leads between the humps. This is 
the only sign of human occupation, and no one as- 
cends or descends it. Behind it, as the Japanese do 
in Wiju, the Russians may move as openly as if they 
were in a peaceful valley at home. Down the river 
and up the river the banks on both sides are still high, 
and on the Japanese side are formed of ridges which 
are natural breastworks and earthworks. Shelter 
for reserves is ready to hand as if made to order. 

Rare is the figure of the Korean. Dots, patches, 
and lines of blue uniform have taken the place of the 
peasantry who, in other times, would be showing 
spring activity. The only ploughing that is done is 
that of the engineers scarring the reverse slopes. The 
work in hand is war; the scene distinct in its cleav- 
age from all gatherings of humanity. The hill-sides 
where there have been only paths are cut by roads 
prepared for a battle's work, as the mechanics of the 
stage prepare for producing a play. In a word, this 
means mobility. The passage of a field-gun must 
be made as smooth as that of the theatrical star. 



so WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Whoever crosses the river with an army must pos- 
sess the low islands either above or below the town. 
Once they are his he may no longer screen the move- 
ments on his immediate front, and submits his force 
to shrapnel from the enemy's heights. Two of the 
channels below Wiju may be forded; the third must 
be bridged. If the Japanese are to open the way 
into Manchuria by this route, the making of the 
bridge and crossing it in sufficient force to drive 
back the Russians (should they resist), form the 
diamond point of interest. It means more than a 
pass, for here the pass must first be built. 

Our army of ants with their guns, rifles, spades, 
bridge timbers, pontoon sections, presses closer and 
closer to the river bank. No movement seems un- 
premeditated. No one among the fifty thousand 
men, fed by the coolie-strewn road, who have settled 
down on this foodless region is ever idle. Instead of 
an army of soldiers it is presently an army of navvies, 
so preoccupied with industry that it seems to resent 
the waste of the noon hour. The little man who 
strains under a timber smiles as he goes; for every 
step is one against the enemy of his country. 

We watch the roads; we watch the slopes from 
our camp; and we wait, devouring in one mood, 
despising in another, the rumors brought by the in- 




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FIRST OPERATIONS AT THE YALU 5 1 

terpreters who make it possible for us to talk at all 
with our hosts. Perforce, the army's first work is to 
take the islands in order to provide striking ground 
for the great action. 

This morning Captain Okada, a teacher in the 
Staff College at Tokio, who is our mentor and cen- 
sor, came to the correspondents' camp at 4 a.m. 
with word that an action was expected at daylight. 
You stumbled into your clothes, you stumbled out 
of your tent, with field-glasses over one shoulder 
and flask over the other, and a piece of chocolate in 
your pocket. As your eyes strained to make out the 
path in the darkness, you felt the cold night mist on 
your face. From a hill where you waited for dawn^ 
you could see the outline of other hills, and in the 
valley something dark — the town. 

There, expectant, in the oppressive stillness, one 
looked toward the east for the sunrise, and listened 
for the rattle of musketry. It began far away on our 
right in volleys, as company after company of a line 
pulled their triggers. It was not a heavy fire; it 
signified only a skirmish or the morning '^constitu- 
tional." The moment of '^ darkness before dawn" 
was theatric, as if the lights of a stage were turned 
down and then up. One second you could see 
nothing. Half a minute later, only the mist hang- 



52 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ing in the valleys and cut by the heights shut out 
the view. 

The firing soon died away. We were told soon 
afterward that the Japanese had rushed and taken one 
of the islands far down the river. There was noth- 
ing for us to do except to look at the positions. The 
reaches of the river below the town were visible from 
the ridge where Captain Okada ^^ guarded" us. 

On the first island now held by the Japanese, we 
could see the infantry in their trenches, and the de- 
tails for water, and wood, and provisions going and 
coming. There were no signs of an assault by them. 
On the next island is the custom-house and a small 
village which needed no Goldsmith to sing its de- 
sertion. So far as we could see, not a soul was in 
sight on the whole Russian front except a Russian 
officer, who rode up and down on his trotting Cossack 
pony as if he were on his morning constitutional. 
Was he riding along an intrenched line or not? 
Were there Russians on Genkato or only the pre- 
tence ? To the onlooker it seemed as if the Japanese 
might early cross over and take possession of the 
empty houses. But a gun is silent till it speaks. 
Later, we had a foretaste of what might happen if 
the Japanese should rise from their cover. 

At the summit of the path leading over Tiger's 



FIRST OPERATIONS AT THE YALU 53 

Hill, between the two humps, were visible three 
figures, the only others besides the itinerant horse- 
man which indicated the presence of an enemy. At 
intervals one of the three would bend over and the 
other two would stand back. Then there was a 
puff of smoke, and a shell went flying down the river. 
Where it burst you could not tell. The solitary 
horseman rode back again. Some reserves near by 
were formed in line and marched away. 

Ever this is the Land of the Morning Calm, where 
the still cold of night breaks into the still warmth of 
day. As I counted the seconds from the time of 
Tiger's Hill gun-fire till we heard its report (in order 
to judge the distance), I could hear no sound in this 
area where two armies faced each other except the 
ticking of my watch. Directly from the cover of 
Tiger's Hill two companies of Cossacks rode out 
widely deployed. They were a fair mark; too fair 
a mark. The Japanese are not so naive in the art of 
war as to disclose their gun positions on such slight 
temptation. 

Just opposite Wiju itself a number of Japanese 
engineers were building a bridge over to the first 
island. They went about their work in a methodical 
way, as if their task was the most natural and com- 
monplace thing in the world. They crossed back and 



54 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

forth in boats with supports, and they laid planks 
with seeming unconcern, as seen through the glasses, 
when probably they were making every minute 
count. 

The doubts or worries of the bridge-builders did 
not occur to the spectators on the heights, who saw 
simply so many moving figures, ascertained their 
object, and passed to other things. They had the 
advantage of an army of offence. Either the Rus- 
sian had to unmask some of his batteries or allow 
them to make headway. He acted on his decision 
as to which was the lesser of the two evils with a 
burst of shrapnel, which made the bridge-builders 
scatter for cover like girls in lawn dresses out of the 
rain. That was the work of a few moments — an 
incident of warfare. So was the diversion of the 
Russian battery's attention to the town, where circles 
of blue smoke from bursting shrapnel hung fleecily 
in the air and then were blown away, and the bits 
of iron that rained in the streets formed the first 
souvenirs of the conflict that is to come. 



VII 

CROSSING OF THE YALU 

I HAD been at Wiju three days when my friends 
and guides, the batteries that I had passed on the 
road from Ping Yang, began to arrive. They were 
parked near our camp. Every morning I looked 
out of my tent door to make sure they had gone no 
farther. I saw the artillerymen starting out at dusk 
with their spades; I noticed spots on the hill-sides 
where the earth had been freshly turned in prepara- 
tion for an expected guest. Finally, on the morning 
of the 29th (April), I saw that the guns and limbers 
had been swung into position ready for the teams, 
and that night I heard the rumble of their wheels as 
they took the roads which branch in every direction 
from the main highway. 

If this were not enough, there ran through the 
whole army the tremor which is unmistakable. This 
or that minor operation will cause a flutter of ex- 
pectancy which a bare report and exaggeration may 

make portentous. When the hour of a great move- 

55 



% 



S6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ment is at hand nothing can keep the secret which 
runs from man to man hke some magic fluid. 
Before the guns began to move we had heard infantry 
fire at the right — that sacred right where no one ex- 
cept the officers and soldiers whose duty took them 
was allowed to go. 

On the night of the 29th we heard that the Japanese 
had effected a crossing. For this news, so far as we 
had known, we might have had to wait for weeks, 
or we might have had to wait only for hours. The 
distance was not more than four miles, and the aver- 
age citizen may ask why we did not ride to the spot 
and find out for ourselves. The correspondents 
are a part of this military organization in that they 
may go only where they are told. While the army 
is ordered into the fight, we are ordered to keep out of 
it. At four in the morning came the word from head- 
quarters with the modest information that by going 
to a certain place we might see something of interest. 
The certain place gave one a view varying from one 
to ten miles. 

On the way from camp no sign left any doubt 
in your mind that the great day had come. Where 
the guns had been on the more distant slopes were 
only a few transportation carts parked; where regi- 
ments had been encamped were only the ashes of 



CROSSING OF THE YALU 57 

camp-fire and sward that had been pressed by sleeping 
forms neighbor to that which the artillery horses 
had ploughed with restive hoofs. Over another rise 
and you saw the lines of marching men moving 
steadily to the position where they were to be at call 
if wanted. A glance along any one of the roads 
which the army had built to lead up to its positions, 
told its story of a movement in force. 

"There will be some artillery practice," said a 
Japanese officer politely, and he smiled the Japanese 
smile. 

It was a knoll high among its fellows to which the 
correspondent was assigned. There he could see 
everything except the thing he most wanted to see- 
Where was it that the Japanese had crossed? The 
bluffs to the right hid the upper reaches of the river 
and you looked to the west as you had before. You 
saw the town of Wiju once more under the morning 
mist, with the tower on the bluff that hid it from 
the Manchurian bank. Near by the gunners of a 
battery lay in their casemates, bathing themselves 
in the first rays of the sun. Beyond were more 
shelving hills dipping to the river's edge, while the 
spreading stream made channels around low sandy 
islands. Those the Russians had held they had 
burned and evacuated yesterday. But the Japanese 



^S WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

had not occupied them. Their Hne was still to be 
seen like a blue flounce to the line of willows that 
furnished them cover. 

Only the creak of axles along the roads could be 
heard while we waited for the beginning of the great 
game. We saw orderlies going with the messages 
to the guns, and then we saw a flash from one of the 
bluffs, where a Japanese battery was concealed. 
Others followed, but you saw them not; you looked 
to see where the first shell struck. A wreath of blue 
smoke broke over some undergrowth where the 
Russians had a trench with the same flash as a sky- 
rocket, but with the difference that wickedly it spelled 
death instead of frolic, and a man resurrected from 
the age of cross-bows would know instantly that it 
did. 

There is nothing in our every-day life comparable 
with shrapnel fire except lightning; it is the nearest 
thing to it that a human being can produce, and has 
the same awful theatricalism. As few men are killed 
by shell-fire, so few are kifled by lightning. The 
soughing of the fragments of a shrapnel are those of 
the wind through a telegraph wire multiplied a thou- 
sand times and raised to a high key. It sometimes 
seems to a recruit like a file-tined fork scooping out 
his stomach and scraping the vertebrae of his back- 



CROSSING OF THE YALU 59 

bone. Such are his feeHngs then that his legs will 
not lift him out of his trench, or, if they will, they 
carry him to the rear. 

I was thinking of these things, and of how neither 
force was composed of veterans, when the Japanese 
guns turned their attention to what we called the 
"conical hill battery" because of the shape of the 
rise on which it was placed. From the first the coni- 
cal hill battery had been saucy; from the first it got 
something like the worth of the money which brings 
guns and ammunition six thousand miles from Rus- 
sia to the Yalu. These disturbers of the peace 
dropped shells in Wiju without an ''After you, gen- 
tlemen," on a quiet routine afternoon, as the first 
signal of their presence. They informed the Japan- 
ese line on the lower islands what they might expect 
if they advanced. So far as we knew, there might 
be others where they came from. When they pleased 
they could shell the town, but the Japanese gunners 
were content to bide their time and let them. The 
hour had come when our side might pay off old scores 
with the unerring aim of days of calculation. A 
little tardily, but with good practice, as gunners call 
good killing, the conical hill battery came into action 
this morning. 

"We've been waiting for you — for you," the Japan- 



6o WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ese guns seemed to say, and they let go. They 
covered the position with shrapnel rings which hung 
still in the clear air, till so fast and thick was the fire 
in that circle that you saw only the flashes through 
the smoke. If the Russians would shoot they could 
not see. A rain of fragments overhead was not enough. 
The howitzers on the island to the right held by the 
Japanese pumped percussion shell after percussion 
shell into the earth, and dust rose to join the smoke. 

The one on the conical hill was not the only Rus- 
sian battery or the only object of Japanese fire. The 
outnumbering guns of the Japanese, so excellently 
manned, made the odds in this duel seem unfair. 
But as long as the enemy has a weapon in his hands 
and has not signalled his surrender, the business is to 
kill. War is the most unsportsmanlike of games. 

Rarely were all the Japanese guns in action ; there 
was no need of it. There were minutes when you 
heard a score of explosions; there were other min- 
utes when you heard the talk of the reserves, who 
with rifles stacked rested on the slopes of the valley 
at your feet. 

Intent on watching the guns, one forgot the direc- 
tion where the hills hid the stream itself, but not the 
back — ^where the crossing, report said, had been made. 
Here the hills on the opposite bank were without 



CROSSING OF THE YALU 6i 

batteries, while our own above Wiju shot across to 
the heights to the westward. 

Sweeping casually the Russian side of the upper 
reaches of the river with the naked eye, one saw 
something denser than a shadow that seemed to be 
moving. A look through the glasses, and the pro- 
gramme of the day's work was as clear as what had 
happened. On the Russian left (up the river) the 
bank rises in a precipitous rocky formation to a height 
of a thousand feet. At the base is a path and a line 
of sand left by the falling current. Stretching along 
this for a mile or more, like so many blue-pencil 
marks on brown paper, were the Japanese. 

Any Russians above them could have done more 
damage with tumbling bowlders than with rifle-fire. 
They were under a shelf . They could be reached only 
by shooting straight down the stream, and had gun 
or rifle ventured this, they would have found no 
cover save the smoke of shrapnel from the batteries, 
which would have sent them back. The crossing of 
the Yalu had been effected by a few rounds of mus- 
ketry fire. The impregnable position of the enemy 
had become cover and protection for the Japanese 
advance. 

This line kept breaking into sections, which scram- 
bled up ravines to the heights and disappeared. We 



62 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

turned to the guns, which fired whenever a mark 
showed itself. At three in the afternoon we saw our 
hill-chmbers again — some of them. They had gone 
over the heights and were under cover of a knoll 
opposite Wiju. One may say that the Japanese guns, 
numerous, well-placed, withholding their fire till 
the great day, accomplished the crossing of the Yalu ; 
one may say that the crossing was the result of a feint 
on the left and a movement on the right; one may 
say many things. The Japanese always intimated 
that they meant to cross below Wiju on the left. 
They had crossed above Wiju in the war with China. 
But the fords were uncertain and tortuous. We even 
heard from our interpreters of a magnificent, if not 
warlike, plan of building a pontoon under fire over 
the deep channel below Wiju. This the Imperial 
Guard (our centre), fully expecting to lose half their 
number, were to cross while the left made a lodg- 
ment for flanking purposes further down-stream, as I 
have remarked; correspondents were permitted to 
look at the lower part of the river all they pleased. 

This movement, like all others, resolved itself 
into the old essentials. There was less strategy than 
tactics. Why the islands up the river had been chosen 
for the point of crossing was plain enough when, 
from the tents of head-quarters, on the evening of the 



CROSSING OF THE YALU 63 

30th, I saw the bridges which had been built joining 
two islands across narrow and sluggish currents. 
Once arrived on the other bank, the storming party 
were not in a pocket, as they would have been below 
Wiju, but had safe breathing space under cover. 
They could go over in the night and be ready for 
work in the morning. 

This crossing was used in the war with China, 
and now again in the war with Russia, because it 
was the strategically natural one. The simple prin- 
ciples of strategy must remain the same. Upon 
personnel and execution depends success. In the 
hour when the faculties are dazed with the mass of 
incident and the memory crowded with kaleido- 
scopic scenes, every fresh consideration brings a 
fresh tribute of praise to this feat of military work- 
manship. It is clear enough now why the general 
did not want us to see the ends of his lines, or whither 
the timbers and the planking for the bridges were 
borne after they disappeared behind the knolls fol- 
lowing the military roads. His line was far shorter 
than anyone had supposed. The river itself pro- 
tected his flanks. Within a radius of ten miles his 
whole army was held ready to throw over the river 
in force, unwearied by marching. His success was 
his preparation. His fortune was the weather, 



64 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

which made the water in the Yalu low; which gave 
his gunners clear air; which gave his men dry ground 
to sleep on and dry clothes to sleep in. 

There is a word which has possibly been used in 
every despatch sent from the front, and that is ''pre- 
cision." No word can take its place. Whether 
in the arrangement of transport or in the accuracy 
of gun-fire, it expresses the work of this army. We 
who have seen manoeuvres where hitches if not blun- 
ders ever occur are prepared for greater ones in 
actual battle. The movement of the 30th of April 
on the banks of the Yalu was like a field-day (if you 
can imagine such a thing) where the troops had 
been taken over the positions beforehand, and every 
detail rehearsed with the care of a wedding cere- 
mony. From the time that coolies were set to saw- 
ing bridge planks far to the rear, and the first out- 
post was placed and the first sod turned for a road 
or a gun position, the Japanese army seemed to 
know precisely what it had to do and just how it was 
going to do it. From the head-quarters with its 
Japanese smile no information came, and the barrier 
to inquiry was ever that of Oriental politeness. 
The contention that a modern army cannot keep 
its secrets and have correspondents in the field was 
made ridiculous by the Japanese success in this 



CROSSING OF THE YALU 65 

respect. It can never be used again to excuse mili- 
tary incompetency. The years of preparation for 
a set task made in Tokio (which might mean httle 
in practice) became in appHcation and execution as 
pattern-like as theory itself. 

Of Kuroki, the man who directed operations on 
the spot, we have had occasional glimpses. He is 
sturdily built, sinewy, with no spare flesh, and has 
a clean-shaven square jaw. In the days of waiting, 
when no man knew where or how we were to cross 
or what forces the Russians had, and he alone knew 
all — quite all, staff officers knowing only each his part 
— one saw him walking by himself among the trees 
of the groves which he and his staff occupied, and 
again with a telescope on a prominence watching 
his own troops rather than the positions of the enemy 
— watching and smoking. 

I have said that fortune favored him. I should 
have added that nature also favored him. The 
hills running toward the bluff, which descends sharply 
to the river, held valleys between their heights which 
were meant to mask an army's movements. And 
the Japanese engineers knew how best to make na- 
ture serve their purpose. They, least of all, in an 
army which shirks no amount of tedious labor to 
^ain an object, were inclined to spare any pains. 



66 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Before the troops and the guns advanced, every 
point of the road where it might have been visible 
from the Russian side had been screened by fences 
of corn-stalks and of young trees cut near their roots 
and set in the ground. Where the descent was at 
right angles to the river itself, aprons of grass and 
weeds had been hung. You could have driven a 
battery of artillery the length of the miles of hidden 
roadway freshly constructed without once showing 
it to the enemy. 

Riding back from head-quarters to camp, you 
left the army behind as abruptly as the walls of a 
town. Roads, screens, gun positions had served 
their purpose. The hill-sides were swept clean of 
human occupation. No debris was left behind. 
There never is in the path of the Japanese. In Wiju, 
whose houses only the day before had held all the 
Japanese that could be packed on their floors, open 
windows and door- ways stared at you. The quiet 
was as intense as the crack of a shrapnel is sharp. 



VIII 

BATTLE OF THE YALU 

We had expected that the battle would come with 
the crossing, but the two were entirely distinct. The 
crossing was effectively secured on one day (April 
30th), and the battle occurred on the next. Draw 
a line approximately north and south through Wiju 
and both banks to the east were already in possession 
of the Japanese on the night of the 30th. Opposite 
Wiju the Ai River joins its waters to those of the 
Yalu. On its bank the right flank of the Japanese 
rested at the end of the first day's movement. All 
that night troops were crossing into China till morn- 
ing found Korea without the army that had been a 
self-invited guest for many weeks. 

If the spectator on this famous First of May had 

some idea of what he was going to see, the vagueness of 

that idea added to the interest. He knew that the day 

before had been one of the great days of his life, 

and expected that this would be another. Rising 

at dawn becomes second nature when you are with 

67 "" ' " 



68 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

an army. As I rode through the south gate of the 
city, Captain Okada looked at his watch and asked if 
the others were close behind. He was a little wor- 
ried, like a man who has guests to dinner. There 
was to be a charge and the time for it was almost as 
exactly set as that for the rising of a theatre curtain. 

The bluff above Wiju was no longer forbidden 
to the correspondent. Lifting your glasses to see 
what new tableau this ever-prepared army — that 
shows you nothing till it is finished — had in store 
for you, no glance was wasted on Tiger's Hill, which 
rises out of the river's bed to the height of a thou- 
sand feet or more. Its sides are precipitous. On 
first thought, it seems an impregnable position of 
defence. But if infantry could not storm these 
steep, rock-ribbed ascents, no more could infantry 
escape down them. To take Tiger's Hill the Jap- 
anese had only to march around it. The Hotchkiss 
which the Russians had there was withdrawn on the 
28th. 

In the dark ages of Europe a robber baron would 
have built his castle on such an eminence and defied 
and ruled all the country round. In this conflict 
it was in the centre of an artillery duel, with shells 
flying about its ribs, but none fired at it or from it. 
On the other side of Tiger's Hill there is a sandy 



BATTLE OF THE YALU 69 

bottom, and the Ai River, flowing between heights, 
here enters the Yalu. On the western side of the 
Ai the high bluffs, with the broken sky-hne above 
and the stretch of river sand below, continue till they 
disappear in the haze. Four or five miles from the 
mouth of the Ai are the white walls of a little village, 
Ku-lien-cheng. From this village runs the main 
highway toward Feng-wang-cheng and Liaoyang, 
which the armies must follow. 

This, then, was the position of the Russians who 
had evacuated the broad sandy islands in the river 
below Wiju two days before. They had formed 
on the road. The ease with which the Japanese 
had crossed on the previous day above Wiju, sur- 
prising the Japanese themselves, led to only one 
conclusion. The Russians had not intended to give 
battle at the Yalu. All that they sought to gain 
was delay which should fatten the numbers of their 
guns and men at the point where they should make 
a stand. Whenever they could force the Japanese 
to elaborate preparation for a general attack they 
had gained days, perhaps weeks, for their over- 
worked railroad. Every mile the Japanese travelled 
inland was a mile farther for the Japanese and a 
mile nearer for the Russians to the all-commanding 
thing of all armies — the base of supplies. That 



70 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the Russians would fall between the two stools of a 
general defence and simple delaying tactics was not 
contemplated. 

At the end of the first day you thought that all 
was over except deploying to brush the hills clear 
of the rear-guard. But the second day held a sur- 
prise for the Russians and for the Japanese. For the 
Russians the annihilation of two regiments and the 
loss of twenty-eight guns, as reported. For the Japa- 
nese this made a success that was unexpected. The 
spectators are still in doubt whether to marvel most 
at Russian carelessness or at the marching power of 
the Japanese infantry. 

On the night of April 30th the Japanese occupied 
the last of the islands without loss and crossed in 
force. The morning of May ist showed us clearly 
the Russian position, how it was to be taken, and 
the force that was to take it. Along the crests of the 
Russian heights you could see the dust-colored line 
of the Russian trenches from three hundred to five 
hundred feet above the river-bed. The trenches 
were long enough to hold a great force. They 
might be manned by a thousand or by ten thousand 
men, who rested for the moment in peace and se- 
curity, with their antagonists as clearly outlined 
before them as the streets of a town to a balloonist. 



BATTLE OF THE YALU 71 

Every man there must have known that in the 
end he must fly. Meanwhile he must take as great 
a toll of lives as silent rifles, with magazines filled 
and waiting on the trigger's call, could command 
when they should speak. On the sands below, 
distinct to the naked eye, the cones of two field -hos- 
pital tents bespoke preparation for what the Rus- 
sian rifles could give. Not a man of the Japanese 
lines needed a doctor at that moment. In an hour 
thousands might, the numbers all dependent upon 
the size of the force hugging the dusty line on the 
Russian heights. All was to be real in this drama 
of the meeting of two organized groups of men who 
had marched far and carried heavy loads and lived 
on hard rations for the privilege of mutual destruc- 
tion. 

Lining the wall of Wiju, perfectly secure from 
fire, were the unwashed, non-committal Koreans, 
whose land was one of the subjects of contention. 
(When I crossed the river the next day, the first 
man I saw was another subject of contention — an 
old Chinese sifting out of the sand and ashes the 
parched remains of the grain from the ruins of his 
house, which the Russians had burned.) 

In the Japanese line were some thirty-five thou- 
sand men, forming an intact blue streak from up 



72 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the Ai-ho to Ku-lien-cheng. They would remain 
as stationary as trees till the order came which 
should set them in motion as one machine toward 
the Russian position. Without glasses this line 
seemed no more than a long fence hung with blue, 
the Russian position only an uninhabited height, 
where storms perhaps had eroded the summits. 
Between the two, over the stretch of sands where 
the skirmish line and the reserves were to pass, and 
on the farther channel which they were to ford, was 
no moving object. It was a zone free of life which 
soon would be the scene of human activity that 
would hold the attention of the world — a stretch of 
river-bottom where was to be made the first infantry 
charge of account in the most picturesque of modern 
wars. 

Before the charge began, the onlooker had time 
to realize that he was about to witness a frontal attack 
with modern weapons which many tacticians hold 
to be no longer practicable. The Japanese infantry 
had been marching and hill-climbing all the day 
before. Those who had slept at all had slept little. 
Some had spent the night in getting into position. 
Now they ate their rations of rice and fish, and lay 
packed close in the convolutions of the river-bed, 
seeing the long levels that they had to cover at the 



BATTLE OF THE YALU 73 

double and the heights they had to conquer — a task 
set sternly before them in the clear light of morning. 

Their guardians, the guns, still had suspicions 
of the conical hill battery that had been pounded to 
silence on the 30th. They spat fire with the vicious- 
ness of bitter memory. No answering flash broke 
through the columns of dust tossed up by the com- 
mon shell from the Japanese howitzers or the blue 
smoke rings of the shrapnel. The skirmishers had 
sprung to their feet, company after company of 
that visible line four or five miles long had de- 
ployed, and yet our breathless waiting brought no 
gun-fire from the enemy's heights. 

Had the Russians entirely withdrawn their guns 
overnight ? If they had, then they meant to make 
no proper defence; they sought only to force the 
Japanese to a battle formation; to gain time for 
the increasing army on their chosen ground for 
decisive resistance. Or were the Russian guns 
waiting for a fairer chance? This was a dramatic 
possibility, but it did not stand to reason. The 
frontal attack was to have no savage test. We were 
to see more of a field-day than a battle, you thought, 
not counting on the determined resistance of the 
Russian infantry unassisted. 

With smokeless powder, with field guns of the 



74 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

latest pattern, with all other modern accessories, 
we had two armies not in khaki. Every Japanese 
soldier on this arena was as sharply defined as pencil 
marks on white paper. Could the mind have worked 
rapidly enough through the glasses, one might have 
counted them all. With reserves crowding in, they 
became like a young orchard. For the first fifteen 
minutes there was no rifle-fire. Was it really war 
or was it only manoeuvring? We listened for the 
rattle of musketry; at any second we expected to see 
some of the figures fall. With the undulations of 
the ground, and individuals avoiding bad footing, 
the line would grow bunchy in places, and then thin 
out again to better skirmish order. 

But the units were much closer than the order of 
either the British or American armies. The Anglo- 
Saxons were seeing the German theory tried — the 
German theory of numbers and pressing the attack 
home in face of the enemy's fire as against ours of 
widely separated units. If there were five thousand 
Russians in the trenches on the heights, it seemed 
that they ought to mow that river-bed clean of 
Japanese. 

Such was the distance that the line seemed to go 
ahead from the steady impulse of mechanics instead 
of being carried by human legs. Their double 



BATTLE OF THE YALU 75 

seemed a creep. At one and the same time you 
wanted them to hasten in order to bring on the dra- 
matic finale, and you wanted them to wait in order 
to give you time to grasp in full the panorama they 
afforded. They had two miles to go, with sand to 
their ankles in many places. The first rifle-fire 
came from far to the right up the Ai-ho, where the 
end of the Japanese line was obscured. 

Along the trench on the Russian heights we could 
still see the Russian officers moving back and forth. 
They were not nervous for the fight to begin, while 
they kept their men in tune with majestic oppor- 
tunity. Soon we heard the rake of their volleys and 
the answering fire of the Japanese, who lay under 
cover of the drifts in the sand between their rushes. 
No faltering among the Japanese was evident, but 
you knew, you felt, even from the distance of the 
Wiju wall, that there the fire was hot. Something 
in the attitude of the advancing figures said as much. 
They were bending to their task as if pulling at ropes. 
For it was work now. 

You turned from the effect to the cause, and, de- 
spite that living, pushing line of human flesh on the 
river-bottom, you scanned only the heights, trying 
to count the heads above the dust-covered streak of 
the Russian ridge. 



76 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Such is the concentration of thought and gaze 
in the development of one particular phase of such 
a spectacle, that you may be missing completely 
something new and vital to the whole which is pass- 
ing at the other end of the field. 

How long had they been coming? I wondered, 
when I first saw black objects about two feet high 
under the glasses scattered and running like men out 
of the rain — out of safety into danger, in fact — 
over a knob at its left and plunging into the Russian 
trench. This was the greatest moment of all. Here 
were reinforcements; here was a prospect of re- 
sistance that provided another thrill in the drama. 
Every rifle added to the speaking ones in the trench 
meant more patients for the surgeons waiting in the 
hospital tents for the first arrivals. At the same 
moment we could hear the rat-tat-tat of the Rus- 
sian Maxims. 

Here, too, was a mark to gladden the heart of 
the artilleryman. How long before the gunners 
would see it? Or was not the knob in the range of 
their vision? If not, they must soon receive the 
signal from those who could see. There were no 
longer thirty-five thousand men about to assault 
a position. Nothing except batteries and some 
Russians running across a knob into a trench — 



BATTLE OF THE YALU 77 

where they were to go through hell in order to keep 
an enemy in check for a quarter of an hour. Still 
they came, still the guns said nothing in protest. 
Seconds became minutes. 

The altitude was great; the range was new. When 
the word was passed the shooting was the worst I 
have ever seen Japanese gunners do. Higher and 
higher they lifted the bursts, which still did not reach 
the mark, while the Russians kept on coming as un- 
mindful as if shrapnel were fireworks. '^That 
surely will be high enough," the gunners must have 
thought with each discharge, only to find that it 
fell short. They kept on lifting and lifting them 
— a progress of explosions up the hill-side — till finally 
the blue smoke of a shrapnel curled fairly over the 
heads of the targets. The Russians paid no atten- 
tion to that, or the next, or the next. Then one ex- 
ploded a little over them and a little in front of them, 
so that they got the full benefit of its spread. 

And now all the guns had the range. Common 
shell tossed the earth skyward; shrapnel was scat- 
tered from above. Like so many paper figures under 
a bellows, one burst blew a half-dozen Russians 
down. Then we saw no more except those who 
came out to bring in the fallen. The dare-devil 
Slav had taken the straight path, while the breaking 



78 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

roar of muzzles mocked his temerity. Afterward 
we learned that he could have gone round under 
cover, but that would have lacked aplombj which 
is important in old-fashioned war. 

Unremittingly the Russians held to their task. 
The Japanese line, which had moved out in a semi- 
circle to envelop the whole Russian position, had to 
deal with the situation as it developed. The ad- 
versary's defence had been outlined exactly. Every 
man on the plain knew the limits of its length. At 
either side of this Ku-lien-cheng trench — the one 
which focussed my attention — were ravines leading 
up to either end. 

The most natural human instinct — or animal in- 
stinct, for that matter — will seek to get an opponent 
on the hip, that is, on the flank. Pressing under 
cover of the heights, we soon saw a column passing 
up either ravine. In the feat of reaching the base 
of the heights there had been no faltering step. It 
was done with such drill-ground exactness that the 
dropping units seemed a part of the evolution. Those 
who pressed up the ravines were only a part, a sen- 
sibly delegated part, while the extreme left of the 
line filed on into the little town of Ku-lien-cheng, 
and the right — we saw little of the right, which ex- 
tended up the Ai River, thought little of it in the oc- 



BATTLE OF THE YALU 79 

cupation of nearer impression, little anticipated the 
part it was to play before nightfall. 

What one asked then was : Did those in the trench 
know of the streams of blue-coats, each with a big 
Japanese flag at its head marking every foot of ascent 
like an indicator? 

Mindless of fire as of raindrops, a solitary Rus- 
sian officer now stood on the parapet stiff as a watch- 
tower. A shell-burst sent him down for a moment; 
but he came back It was plain that he was count- 
ing the minutes and proposed to use every one with 
the vengeful opportunity it gave. The ravine at 
the right was deep enough to show only occasional 
moving blue spots, and always that defiant flag 
which rippled and rose and fell with the color-bearer's 
scramble over the rocks. The flanking column at 
the left had arrived on the summit of a broad knoll 
certainly not more than five hundred yards from 
the trench. There with Japanese precision they 
were nicely forming into close order preparatory 
to a rush. But their rush was never made. One 
of those accidents — those keen, murderous satires 
frequent in great engagements — dealt this flock of 
warring humanity a crushing blow from its own 
side. 

Deftly the Japanese gunners had covered the 



8o WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Japanese advance; now the black powder used in 
the howitzers showed its inferiority to the Shimose 
powder of native invention, which, such is its even- 
ness of quahty, will with the same length of fuse 
land shell after shell in the same place in a manner 
that seems superhuman in its application of theo- 
retical mechanics. The charge did not carry the 
howitzer's projectile as far as mathematics — ^war is 
made by mathematics in these days — indicated that 
it should. At the edge of the closely formed men 
on the knoll a column of earth and smoke flew sky- 
ward. We saw the scattering of forms through the 
dust; the disruption of a mass into its parts, and 
before the air was clear — fired before the result of 
the first was apparent — came a second shell. 

Down the hill-side the blue figures came running — 
not out of lasting panic, because they immediately 
reformed. Sixteen blue spots we counted prostrate 
behind them. Within a stone's throw of where the 
Russians had gone out to pick up their own wounded, 
some of the Japanese, with the common gallantry 
that makes bitter enemies akin, ran back to their 
fallen comrades one by one. Some they knelt over 
for only a moment; these were beyond help. Others 
they knelt over at length, applying "first aids." 
The next day we counted eleven new-made graves 



BATTLE OF THE YALU 8l 

with wooden tablets on this spot. A few aheady 
had sprays of plum blossoms stuck in the fresh earth. 
It is cherry blossom time in Japan now, and plum 
blossoms are grateful in the strange land. These 
deaths were tragic sacrifices to a protecting fire, yet 
in the great game of the general conflict they counted 
for little beside the lives the guns had saved in silenc- 
ing the enemy's fire. 

Could the Russian ofiicer^ that sentinel unmoved 
amid the lightnings, have seen this accident it might 
have meant a streak of silver for his cloud. Was 
the flag at the head of the storming party at the 
right also hidden from his view? He remained so 
long that his surprise and capture seemed certain, 
and I think that there was no member of the Japan- 
ese staff — such is the admiration of courage for 
courage — who did not hope that one Russian might 
have the deserved reward of escaping unharmed. He 
must have been the very last to go, steadying his 
men — his big, helpless, untutored, fair-haired chil- 
dren — with his own rock-ribbed fearlessness. One 
moment you saw him still and erect, a lone figure 
poised between the forces of two empires. Then he 
was gone. 

The flag which had zigzagged and bobbed up the 
ravine appeared at the end of the trench. That 



82 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

climber, the color-bearer, was not too out of breath 
to walk the length of the trench, swinging aloft his 
flag in order that all on the plain below might see 
that he had arrived. 

It was not yet ten o'clock. Less than three hours 
had been occupied in a business which you had seen 
as a whole with panoramic fidelity. It was like seeing 
Lookout Mountain fought w.thout the mists. You 
wanted the charge made over again, and made 
slower to give you more time for appreciation. You 
had seen the reality, and at the same time you felt 
a detachment from it which was at once uncanny 
and unsportsmanlike. The spectator had been as 
safe as in an orchestra chair when carnage reigns 
on the stage. It was as if a battle had been arranged 
for him and he had been taken to the best position 
for seeing its theatrical effects. 



IX 

AFTER THE YALU — HAMATAN 

Nature would have called the morning's task 
a day's work finished. Nature would have said to 
the color-bearer and all the men behind him, "Well, 
you've done it; you are here, now rest." What 
followed recalls the remark of a Japanese officer some 
time ago, that the Japanese relied upon the mobility 
of their infantry to offset the dash of the Cossack 
horsemen. 

These little men, who had been ceaselessly at work 
for thirty-six hours, were only beginning the day. 
That supreme test of an army, when fatigue is the 
accomplice of a breathing spell to enjoy victory, was 
met by this army with a smile — the Japanese smile. 
It followed the book as it always does. It followed 
up its advantage with stubborn persistence. 

When the infantry disappeared over the hills 
there remained the dead and wounded and the busy 
surgeons and our silent guns. As the crow flies, 
it was under two miles to Ku-lien-cheng. But to 

reach it we must go through the town and up the 

83 



84 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

river and then across, where the first lodgment was 
made, and through the river sands around Tiger's 
Hill, and ford the Ai-ho. The thought that one 
might now see the trenches where the Russians had 
fought, might go into the position of the " conical 
hill battery,'' and come nearer to the infantry fire of 
the pursuit, called you, regardless of tent and equi- 
page in the rear. 

But Captain Okada passed the word that we were 
to return to camp. This was a blow whose magni- 
tude we who had come twelve thousand miles were 
to realize bitterly. At the time we thought, as he 
said, that it might "all be over." Least of all, did 
we anticipate the spectacular tragedy of Hamatan. 
I think that the Captain is sorry now that he did not 
permit us to join in the pursuit without waiting to 
ask his'superiors for instructions. If he is not, he 
ought to be. 

That night in the little Chinese village of Ku- 
lien-cheng, where the staff had established itself, 
the cable correspondents who crossed the river 
with their despatches saw the aftermath of battle in 
its reality of detail. Russian prisoners were brought 
in with the news of twenty-eight guns captured. 
Russian officers stood around the camp-fire with 
those to whom a Russian disaster meant triumph. 



AFTER THE YALU— HAMATAN 85 

Russian wounded waited with Japanese wounded 
their turn at the operating table. Surgeons nodding 
for want of sleep had a harvest of vital cases. 

With the info mation which the Japanese staff 
now has at hand, the disaster at Hamatan becomes 
explicable only when you know the contempt a 
white man may have for a yellow man, the character 
of Siberian garrisons, and the nature of some old 
commanders who have nodded over their samovars 
through long service in time of peace. Five miles 
from Ku-lien-cheng at the mouth of the Yalu is 
Antung, a prosperous town, one of the new open 
ports which Russia would prefer to have closed. 
Over the coast rise, in that range which extends con- 
tinuously to Liaoyang, Feng-wang-cheng is reached 
by a road from Antung which joins the one from 
Ku-lien-cheng. That by Ku-lien-cheng is the old 
Peking Road, which means nothing in its favor as 
a highway except that it is an old route of travel. 
Small gunboats may approach within range of An- 
tung. Any force of size intending to resist firmly 
the crossing of the Yalu must have had both roads 
in condition for retreat. 

Of course the first essential of any force on the 
defensive is a scouting service, which will at least 
keep it informed of the enemy's actual advance 



86 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

in all directions; and the second is facility for a 
rapid movement to reach the point where the enemy 
develops his attack. Our best judgment is that 
the Russians had at the Yalu ten thousand men, 
with perhaps five thousand on the road in reserve, 
while the Japanese had a total of forty thousand. 
Such disparity made the ultimate arrest of an 
effective crossing out of the question. The art was 
that the Japanese made their lodgment on the 
opposite bank without any loss approaching the toll 
that five hundred infantry properly placed could 
have laid. 

Zassulitch seems to have concluded early in 
April that the Japanese would attempt a landing 
at Antung from transports. Along the water front 
he built deep timbered bomb-proof trenches. On 
the hills back of the town he constructed excellent 
gun positions, with good approaches from the road 
leading to Feng-wang-cheng, which he had reout- 
lined with better grades in places and in others 
repaired according to the regulation requirements 
for rapid withdrawal of artillery and wheeled trans- 
portation. At the water front of Antung itself 
the river is so deep that a disembarkation of in- 
fantry would actually have to be made in bodies on 
shore instead of in the shallows with deployment 



AFTER THE YALU— HAMATAN 87 

at a distance. In short, the Russians seemed to 
have been mesmerized by Antung. They were not 
to be surprised there or flanked from that direction, 
whatever happened elsewhere. 

Coming down to the immediate period before 
the crossing, despite all the Japanese cleverness in 
screening their movements it seemed impossible 
that the Russians could not have apprehended by 
field observation that the Japanese were gathering 
a great force at Wiju. The Japanese method of 
keeping their secrets from outside communication 
was simple and drastic. For a week before the 
battle Korea was sealed. No telegrams, no letters 
were allowed to depart. In her harbors were the 
waiting transports that were to carry the army 
that was to cut off Port Arthur. The work of the 
force which was to fight the first important land 
engagement of the war was unheralded, while the 
ports of China filled the press with "shocks" and 
"counter-shocks" of rumors and imaginings. It 
was a new situation in journalism. But the fact of 
Kuroki's presence by actual contact, I repeat, must 
have been known to the Russians a week before the 
crossing; while the Japanese, on their part, thanks 
to their intelligence service, knew of the Russian 
preparations at Antung immediately they were begun. 



88 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

When a council was held we are told that many 
of the young officers maintained that the Japanese 
were going to cross up the river. Zassulitch, how- 
ever, had arranged that the Japanese should land 
at Antung, and he would not have it any other way. 
One thing that held him to his opinion was the fact 
that a launch had been seen landing bridge timbers 
on one of the lower islands — a candid, open-faced 
launch! At the same time, pontoon trains and 
coolie-borne timbers had moved over a rise in plain 
sight down the river, and, once obscured, had 
started up the river again. (Aside from that, the 
Japanese were, indeed, to build a bridge down the 
river for purposes which shall appear later.) Im- 
mediately they were ready for their effective crossing 
above Wiju, the gunboats made a most earnest dem- 
onstration in the neighborhood of Antung while the 
infantry feinted on the lower reaches. 

Now the place for reserves was unquestionably 
at Hamatan, where the road from Antung joins 
the Peking Road. Here they were held ready to 
reinforce in either direction. But they hurried 
toward Feng-wang-cheng, without going to the 
assistance of their comrades in distress, we judge. 
At all events, they did not come into action, and so 
may be dismissed. From Ku-lien-cheng scarcely 



AFTER THE YALU— HAMATAN 89 

a spadeful of earth had been turned on that mis- 
erable Peking Road, and the approaches up steep 
ascents to the positions were in nowise creditable 
to the engineers who had admirably prepared those 
at Antung. The lack of prevision, especially when 
the action was to be a delaying one, may be accounted 
for by the guns having to take up unexpected posi- 
tions. But there is no gainsaying the fact that 
some of the Russian artillery was at the Yalu a 
fortnight before the battle and had time to prepare 
for eventualities. 

So well did the Japanese fool their enemy that 
they struck the Russian where he was unprepared 
and never sent a man against him where he was 
prepared. On the morning of May 30th the Russian 
position was an angle made by the Ai-ho's junction 
with the Yalu. From their point of crossing up 
the Yalu the Japanese had overnight sent a column 
straight over the hills in line with the course of the 
Ai, while the Guards, crossing up the Yalu, also 
followed the river-bed past Tiger's Hill, and in the 
morning, with the Second Division opposite Ku-lien- 
cheng, the line thus enveloped the angle. The only 
guns to remain and make any show of fight were 
those at Makau, up the Ai-ho, which we had 
been unable to silence during the artillery duel of 



go WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

April 30th, but which were silenced promptly on 
the I St. 

The '^conical hill battery" fell back overnight. 
Hamatan, where the Russians were caught the 
next evening, was less than ten miles away. With 
the close of the infantry engagement the Russians, 
who had by no means made full use of their oppor- 
tunities in a delaying action, had measurably ac- 
complished their object; though with a heavier loss 
than was called for because of their trenches, which 
were in nowise shell-proof. Kuroki had been forced 
to infinite preparation and a battle formation which 
had occupied him two weeks. 

Two ticklish problems which had bothered the 
Japanese Chief of Staff were easily solved. The 
first was that of a pontoon bridge across the one un- 
fordable channel below Wiju. This was accom- 
plished by floating the pontoons down stream from 
above Wiju on the night of the 30th, without dis- 
covery by the Russians. The other was fording 
the Ai-ho in order that the flanking portion of the 
army might reach the heights. The soldiers were 
fertile in suggestions, which included boards and 
tubs and other conceptions that did not meet 
with staff approval. One officer wanted to lead 
a picked body of skilful swimmers, who would strip 



AFTER THE YALU— HAMATAN 91 

naked and, with rifles held over their heads, swim 
across with a rope which they would make fast as 
a help for those who followed. But this was un- 
necessary, because we had had a week without rain. 
Scouts found fordable places. The important thing 
was speed. The quicker a soldier crossed the less 
he was exposed. It was in the water that most of 
our casualties occurred. The pontoons so skilfully 
floated down stream had afforded both guns and 
infantry passage. The route by the bridge across 
the upper islands was out of the question in a junc- 
ture where time was everything. Our little Japanese 
horses cannot gallop much, but they did the best 
they could; and axle deep in sand, again in water, 
a battery crossed over and went up the valley of 
the Ai, and then, sluing and bouncing, through a 
path in the hills running at right angles to the line of 
retreat. 

Along the old Peking Road marched the two regi- 
ments that had defended Ku-lien-cheng. Not only 
the two regiments, but their guns, their soup boilers, 
their heavy transportation carts — an equipment 
wholly out of place — winding and plodding over 
the stony, rutty, crooked mountain highway. The 
band with all its instruments was along, too. No 
flankers were on the hills. With forty thousand 



92 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

victorious soldiers in their rear, the Russians moved 
as one vegetating Siberian garrison would move from 
an old to a new post. 

Our reserves went on past the tired storming 
parties. Three columns of them pressing toward 
a common objective climbed over the hills. Some 
of the men were so tired that they fell asleep the 
moment they halted. One sure way of keeping 
them awake, a Japanese officer told me, was to 
keep them going. The first knowledge the Russians 
had of the activity of the Japanese pursuit was the 
sight of a company of the Twenty-fourth Regiment, 
which had outmarched all the others. 

When it came over the knoll it beheld a soldier's 
Promised Land. Here was a road charged with a 
marching column under its rifles. The Russian guns 
unlimbered; the Russian infantry deployed and 
charged. The tables of odds at Ku-lien-cheng 
were suddenly changed. If that company had done 
the text-book thing of hurrying back to its sup- 
port, the Russians would have been much farther 
along the road and the booty and prisoners might 
have been less. It had one captain and three lieu- 
tenants killed. All its cartridges were gone and bayo- 
nets were fixed, while the Russian line was only two 
hundred yards away — when bountiful assistance 



AFTER THE YALU— HAMATAN 93 

came. The Russians had scarcely felt this fire on 
their right flank in front when the head of the 
column on the left flank broke over the hills, and 
so did that of the right flank in the rear. 

From that moment the drama was not war in the 
valley of the old Peking Road. It was slaughter. 
The Russians formed around their guns and tried 
to charge. Bullets that missed the infantry caught 
the artillery horses and the horses of the wagons. 
Increasing as more men came up, the fire from the 
hills was as steady and remorseless as an electric 
current along a wire. Out of the melee a Russian 
priest led the remains of one regiment, charging 
through a bullet-swept space. We know only that he 
did this gallant thing. All Russia must know him 
as a hero ere this letter is mailed. 

The rest had made the sacrifice that a soldier's 
honor demanded. In their disorganization and 
inexperience further resistance was futile and mur- 
derous. A white handkerchief came out of an ofli- 
cer's pocket as instinctively as a drowning man 
tries to keep his head above water. The Japanese 
descended from the hill into the valley, where dead 
artillery horses and dead men lay piled together. 
All military sense had disappeared. The masters 
directing the retreat an hour ago were a part of a 



94 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

pitiful, stricken mob. Russian officers, without 
thinking of their captors or of anything except that 
they were breathing and were out of hell, hugged 
and kissed one another while they wept. A messmate 
would see a messmate who was still living and they 
would rush toward each other to embrace hysterically; 
then asking what had become of another friend, 
perhaps would see him lying dead near by. 

''It was strange to us," said a Japanese officer; 
or one Japanese man never kisses or embraces 
another. If the Russians had been fighting for 
many hours steadily against odds and then had sur- 
rendered, they would have borne themselves, as most 
soldiers do under such circumstances, with stoical 
indifference. The effect of the surprise — a surprise 
by yellow men — was that of an explosion. Stand- 
ing among the ruins of the wreck, the survivors 
felt themselves the happy creatures of a dispensa- 
tion of Providence. 

So it is Hamatan which spells ''disaster" for the 
Russians on the Yalu. The impact Japanese divi- 
sions, an attack undelivered until all was ready and 
then delivered rapidly and precisely, meant a strong 
pursuit, which Russian carelessness abetted. It 
may be said of Kuroki that his task could not have 
been better performed. Our own losses were less 



AFTER THE YALU— HAMATAN 95 

than a thousand; the Russian trebled ours, includ- 
ing nearly a thousand prisoners, twenty-one field 
guns, six Maxims, and a proportionate quantity of 
ammunition wagons, transport carts and rifles and 
all the band instruments. 

When the correspondents crossed the river with 
their baggage the morning after, we took the pontoon 
and the bridge by the lower islands, which were 
now thick with transportation. Ku-lien-cheng was 
deserted except for the transport men and the 
wounded Russian officers and prisoners. All were 
yet dazed — dazed by the effects of the explosion. 
The age of the officers varied greatly. I observed 
one, a captain of sixty years, with bristling mous- 
tache, lean and tall, whose face bespoke the frontier. 
He knew no foreign language. He was truly Rus- 
sian. Especially noticeable was the devotion of the 
soldiers to their superiors, cooking what there was 
to cook for them and trying in their rough way in 
this new situation to make them more comfortable. 

"Completely overcome!" a lieutenant kept repeat- 
ing. That expressed his whole sense of Hamatan. 
Then he added: "It is a little hard to be among 
the first prisoners in the war." 

Yet I thought that the fatality of the Oriental — 
for the Russian is an Oriental — made all the Rus- 



96 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

sians, considering their previous contempt for their 
Httle enemies, far more cheerful than Anglo-Saxons 
would have been under the same conditions. 

In Antung itself a courtyard is packed thick with 
guns — better field guns than the Japanese have ever 
owned before — and busy little soldiers of Japan are 
separating and cataloguing the booty of the giants. 
The big bass horn has two bullets holes through it 
and the trombone is quite beyond repair, for the 
same vital reason. There are live shells enough 
to supply the battery, which will soon be turned 
against its former owners, with ammunition for 
more than one hard fight. I noticed that the Cos- 
sack swords were dull edged. Our enemy has yet 
to wake up to a realization that he is at war with a 
serious foe. Outside in the street the slender, nar- 
row Japanese carts were passing by. These are meant 
for mountain roads. The broad, heavy carts that 
we captured are meant for the steppes. Between 
the two types there is the contrast of a hansom and 
a four-wheeler. 

In another compound not far away are the men 
who three days ago had manned the guns and 
guarded the carts — big, bulky fellows in boots and 
broad-legged trousers and loose tunics. They are 
having a much better time than they anticipated. 




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AFTER THE YALU— HAMATAN 97 

When I looked in on them I saw that their hosts had 
rigged up a horizontal bar. A sturdy little Japanese 
guard was teaching them exercises. They tried 
hard and laughed at their failure and marvelled at 
the agility of the little fellow, who, with a Japanese 
grin and Japanese persistence, kept on urging and 
training them till they were quite tired out. Another 
guard was a teacher of the Japanese numerals and 
a pupil who stuttered away at the Russian numerals, 
in turn. In the hospitals, Russian and Japanese 
wounded are receiving the same attention. The 
wounded Japanese is the more stoical. He sub- 
mits grimly to an operation without anaesthetics 
and he marvels a little when a Russian sufferer 
groans. Some of the Russians who were shot at 
Hamatan have since died. Among them was a 
captain who was buried on one of the hills above the 
town with military honors, and with religious hon- 
ors in keeping with a war where the East meets the 
West with modern arms. There were two services; 
one by a Buddhist priest and the other by Mr. Vyff, 
the Danish missionary. 

Through the open doors of the hospitals on these 
pleasant spring days in a temperate clime comes the 
creak of Chinese and Japanese carts carrying the 
food of the soldiers ahead. First, Seoul was the First 



98 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Army's base; then Chenampo; then Yongampho. 
Now it is Antung. The water front where the Rus- 
sians built their trenches without an armed host is 
stocked with stores that feed the stream of traffic 
moving northward. The hfe of the town itself is 
unchanged. One day the Russians were here; the 
next the Japanese. The shops were not closed on 
account of the change. There is no license on the 
part of the Japanese, they act the part of guests — 
and customers. Our little soldier pays for the good- 
ies that the cake vendor had ready on his arrival. 
The Government pays a fair price for horses and 
a fair rental for carts. Antung is busier than it has 
been for years and sees profit ahead. 



X 

THE OWNER OF THE BATTLE GROUND 

When General Kuroki and his staff approached 
Feng-wang-cheng, the Governor and the local offi- 
cials came out to offer him the freedom of the city, 
which had been in the grip of his advance for 
more than a week. The woven-hair windows of 
the Governor's chair threw a subdued light on silken 
robes; the swaggering trot of its bearers, scornful of 
populations, set off the occupant's languid impas- 
siveness, the absence of which in the Caucasian forms 
the Oriental's chief source of contempt for us. 

In all the essential facts of modern conquest 
the occupation of Feng-wang-cheng was complete. 
There was not even the saving hope (which buoys the 
spirits of most beaten peoples in their humiliation) 
of legions in the background which might re-form 
and recover the lost ground. Submission here had 
no hint of sullen patience; it was signified by receiv- 
ing the General as if he were a travelling foreigner 
of distinction. For the Chinese the art of war is 
the art of making profit out of defeat. The officer 

99 



lOO WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

and the official had skin of the same tint and a com- 
mon classic language, whose written characters either 
could understand. Saying that both were Oriental 
is the same as saying that both Americans and Abys- 
sinians are Christians. 

Kuroki had come on horseback. His blue coat 
was sprinkled with the dust of the army-travelled 
road; his credentials were the blow his legions could 
strike. Otherwise than stepping in and out of his 
chair the Governor had lifted no finger of effort to 
bring himself to the meeting; his credentials were 
the service and the squeeze-money he could com- 
mand without a gesture. The contrast of the two 
men was pale beside that of the soldiery at their 
backs. These incarnated a civilization which is 
the most exclusively martial of any in the world, 
and those one which has found a means of unpar- 
alleled perpetuity in its contempt for arms. 

The discipline of the Chinese soldiers was in har- 
mony with the cut of their baggy trousers. They 
were recruited from the scum of the population — 
rapscallions who had a ^'good job," an easy way of 
earning a living. The object of their organization 
was personal protection to the Government; their 
number, some test of his importance in the world. 
From road's end to road's end, to right and to left, 




Copyright^ igo4, by Collier's Weekly. 

General Kuroki, commanding the First Japanese Army, in front of his 
headquarters at Antung after the victory of the Yalu, 



THE OWNER OF THE BATTLE GROUND lOi 

wherever the advance extended, were the best blood 
and best physique of another land where, pay not 
being the main question, it is a great privilege to 
carry a rifle for your Emperor. Yet the navy would 
have seen in their Governor's manner of dealing 
with the situation, and in their untidy soldiers, too, 
a vindication of their race pride. Kuroki's adjuncts 
of power were not those which the Chinese have held 
dear for thousands of years. His marching and 
counter-marching thousands are sheerly ridiculous 
to the only civilized people which have no respect 
for the profession of arms. 

Never has the Chinese had a broader canvas or a 
better subject for the art of making profit out of the 
conqueror. He is in a sense the umpire representing 
civilized opinion as between the two disputants. 
With the burning of Moscow in mind, superficial 
consideration might have led one to expect that the 
Russian would desolate the land through which he 
retreated. Policy would not permit. Some houses 
have been burned, but these seem to represent only 
individual instances of Cossack outlawry or the spleen 
of commanding officers who were out of temper on 
retreat. 

Population and granaries at Feng-wang-cheng, as 
at Antung, were left undisturbed. The Russians 



I02 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

expect to return. They argue that when they come 
they will want the corn for food, and the fodder for 
their horses, and houses in which to billet their sol- 
diers. Any expanding empire must have some 
conviction that it is easier to rule a people through 
their indifference and undisturbed economy than by 
provoking their hatred. The Japanese expect to 
remain till the Russian cloud has passed. They 
have the same material objects of sustenance and 
comfort in view, and, besides, they must give day by 
day proof of the singleness of their purpose in com- 
ing to rescue this people from outside dominion and 
guarantee a permanent return of sovereignty. They 
come as friends of the Chinese, who recognize friend- 
ship only through actual benefits gained. 

Whether it is the house of the Governor, the store- 
keeper, or the rooms of a temple priest that you oc- 
cupy, each has the most distinct Oriental felicity in 
face of personal discomfort — that art of making 
profit from defeat; of making you feel at home in a 
way that commands a present at the end of your stay. 
You comprehend how the Russians were made 
equally welcome. Does the Chinese distinguish 
at all between friend and foe ? Does he see in either 
more than inconvenience in return for a market for 
his produce ? I am inclined to think that he would 



THE OWNER OF THE BATTLE GROUND 103 

not object to having the war go on indefinitely with- 
out prejudice as a business proposition. His pref- 
erences are hidden behind a mask which possibly 
the Japanese, who can read the ideographs, may 
penetrate, but surely an Occidental may not. He 
wants, indeed, to rule no other country and to have 
no other country rule him. The island Oriental 
understands him better than the Russian does. If he 
could fully appreciate that Japanese success means the 
integrity of China as promised — and that he might 
go his own hermit way — the big Manchurian might 
have the patriotism to fight on his own account. 

But the integrity of China is a generality which 
includes the people who live across the river and 
in the next town. What has one to do with them? 
Do they earn food for you and your family? The 
Chinese has in common with every other Chinese 
manners, customs, physiognomy, and industry. Col- 
lectivism he does not understand at all, or rather he 
understands it in his way. If he succeeds in business 
he will take all his relatives into the establishment 
and care for them. He will go in numbers to the joss- 
house to beat gongs to appease mythical animals 
that make droughts and floods. Foreign invasions 
belong to the same order of disturbances, and he 
would meet them in the same way. 



I04 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

To-day, then, we have the most martial and the 
least martial of civilizations side by side exemplify- 
ing by personal examples each its dominating qual- 
ity. One searches history vainly for a parallel. 
There is the industrialist gleaning parched grain 
from the ruins of his house and the patriot who dies 
for glory alone. It is fair weather for military move- 
ments — on the road is the soldier. It is sowing 
time — in the fields is the Chinese. The man on the 
road is working slavishly for his country; the man 
in the field is working slavishly for himself and his 
family. 

The ^'transporters" better explain the martial 
marvel of Japan than the firing line. The "trans- 
porters" are always at the rear, and only at the rear — 
the drudge ants of this army of workers that carry 
mill and granary with them. They play the same 
part as our civilian teamsters who receive $3 a day, 
while our soldiers themselves receive only one-sixth 
as much. It is a ''good job" for the teamster; it 
is war for the soldier. For the "transporter" it is 
neither a "good job" nor war. 

In the drafting of conscripts in Japan the poorest 
in physique and general fitness are rejected. Of 
those accepted, the farthest below the standard, I 
understand^ are made "transporters." Because he 



THE OWNER OF THE BATTLE GROUND 105 

is an inch shorter than his fellows, Nippon Denji 
may smell powder only when the transport wagons 
are attacked. At landing places and depots he 
must bear sacks of rice and sake kegs on his back. 
On the road, he has to lead by day the ponies that 
draw the little transportation carts and groom them 
by night. The ponies go better for leading; if they 
did not, economy of energy would demand that the 
''transporter" walk just the same. For those gen- 
iuses of quick marches and swift, decisive blows — 
the fighting men — the time required for perfecting 
strategic plans or bringing up other columns may 
mean weeks of rest. Not infrequently they must 
wait for the supply trains, which means all the more 
haste for carts and ponies. 

The ''transporter's" work is like that of the 
housewife. There is always more to do. Day in 
and day out they pass back and forth over the dusty 
road, no sooner depositing one load than returning 
for another. A month's wages would not buy a 
day's square meals in New York or Chicago. Yet 
they smile as they work. Their hearts are in their 
drudgery. Their smile, their spirit, their eagerness — 
these are the marvels to the Occidental. They are 
not forced to toil by a military aristocracy. It is 
a privilege to serve the Emperor in the field even as 



io6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

a "transporter." A line of braid on the cuff — the 
soldier has one; the " transporter" has none — is the 
bridge between chivalry and labor. When one of 
the Russian regiments would tower over any Jap- 
anese regiment like so many elder brothers, the add- 
ed inch which takes the conscript from the supply 
train to the firing line has a suggestion of irony to 
the Occidental. 

So it well might to the native. For the Manchu 
is as big as the Russian. No human exhibition could 
be more unreasonable to him than that of the "trans- 
porters" who do coolies' labor for a pittance. But 
the Chinese, too, is a creature of sentiment and of 
self-sacrifice. He works for his family and his an- 
cestral tablets. On the other hand, the "transport- 
er's" family sent him forth, proud that he might 
endure hardship for a few cents a day. 

Japan, the chivalrous, is poor; China, the mer- 
cantile, is rich. If the Chinese should turn their 

energy toward war Yes, if — if all the people 

of New York should decide to move into the coun- 
try to-morrow! Speculation is easy. The Chinese 
have assimilated many armies, many * transporters." 
They have worked out the only practice — making 
profit of defeat — that has preserved a people intact 
while new empires were born and old ones fell. 



THE OWNER OF THE BATTLE GROUND 107 

They started before the Greeks, and the Peking cart 
still goes creaking along their bad roads. Whatever 
the outcome of the war, they will miss no good bar- 
gains, will waste no time in idleness, and will always 
be fond of their little children, and fonder of their 
grandmothers, and yet fonder of the graves of their 
great-great-grandmothers. 



XI 

A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD 

Japan has two religions. One is all soul; the 
other is the worship of patriotism. One has carried 
the breath of peace through the breadth of Asia; 
the other is the outgrowth of a single country's prim- 
itive superstitions, without a strictly ethical code or 
ethical grandeur. 

The memorial service for the dead of the Second 
Division yesterday was a revelation of the heart 
of this peculiar, this martial race. The hurrying 
tourist, seeing many Buddhist temples with their 
many images (visited by old men and women and 
children) and skipping the simple Shinto temples, 
reaches hasty conclusions of a national cult that is 
little more than the memories of a people's folklore. 
War passes the philosopher by and sinks the plum- 
met deep into the human emotions. Here, while 
a Shinto priest performed the rites of his faith, an 
Imperial prince, a general of a division, and a score 
or more of staff officers and eight thousand troops 
were motionless, reverential spectators. When the 

io8 



A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD 109 

Buddhist priest took his place, the officers scattered 
and the soldiers were marched away. 

Both the situation and the weather were fit for 
the ceremony held in a fair land that military ardor 
had conquered. It was at nine in the morning, 
when you prefer to leave the shade for the open. 
The sun shone brightly. There was a hillside for 
the sanctuary; the plain for the congregation in 
khaki. Beyond them was the town, with its walled 
citadel, pagoda-roofed, set in the levels of growing 
corn and millet, and in the distance the precipitous 
saw-tooth, splintered-rock summits of Feng-wang 
Mountain, the highest point of the natural wall of 
defences of this waiting army. 

On the field of Stakelberg's abortive attempt to 
relieve Port Arthur despatches tell us that the Jap- 
anese Second Army men are still picking up the 
Russian dead and assorting the trophies of another 
hard-fought battle. Whatever struggles were pass- 
ing at the fortress, where besieged strain with watch- 
ing and besiegers with preparation, at Feng-wang- 
cheng the peace was as profound as in the temples 
of Nikko. The stalwart soldiers in rigid lines spoke 
of the North, of the vigor which comes with exist- 
ence in an inhospitable cKmate; but the sanctuary 
carried you back to the toyland where the soldiers 



no WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

came from. The ceremony was in keeping with a 
late spring morning. It was as suited to summer 
as the church interior to winter. Thinking of the 
snows to come, of fields that are wide instead of 
diminutive, of a land whose physical aspect recalls 
the Caucasian, it seemed as much out of place as 
cathedrals in the tropics. Shintoism no less than 
Buddhism is scarcely at home in a land where corn 
instead of rice is grown. 

Two lines of different-colored streamers on tall 
staffs ran to the improvised torii with its fluttering, 
zigzag gohei (strips of white paper denoting purity) 
and the crossed flags of Japan. Cut evergreen trees 
enclosed the oblong space on which the thoughts 
of the thousands were centred. Poets say that the 
evergreen denotes everlasting purity. Shintoism 
says nothing; it is a faith that has forms which 
seem to have outlived their traditions — at least for 
the foreigner's ears. The masses take pines in the 
yard of a Shinto temple for granted, as we take holly 
for Christmastide. In place of the inari (foxes) 
were trees that blossomed with paper flowers such as 
any smart house-boy could make on short notice. 
The inari are the messengers from God; for the 
fox is a clever strategist and therefore fit to guard 
a Japanese temple. The blossoms were peonies; 



A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD iii 

the flower of Buddhism is the lotus. Barring these 
externals, the unreverential might have thought him- 
self invited to a view of the provisions before a 
regimental feast. Young onions, the coarse radishes 
and coarse lettuce of the country, and small Japan- 
ese cakes were piled high on a number of stands, 
and on one, four well-tied and decorous fowls were 
blinking. These were the regimental offerings to 
dead comrades. To those who fell on May ist, 
when the gardens were only just being planted and 
the canteen men had not yet brought up beer, they 
would have been delicacies indeed. After the cere- 
mony, they were to be divided among the living. 

On one side of the sanctuary were the General 
and the Staff of the Second Division, some officers 
from the corps staff, and the foreign attaches. The 
picturesque figure was Nishi himself, who had just 
been made a full general in recognition of his 
services at the battle of the Yalu. Even in his 
khaki, which yet became him well, he looked like 
a feudal lord out of an old print. Lean of figure, 
with skin of yellowed parchment drawn over his high 
cheek-bones, you felt that he might smile — a Japan- 
ese smile — but otherwise his expression, waking or 
sleeping, never changed. On his right was Prince 
Kuni, of the Imperial blood, wearing also the cords 



112 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

of the staff, a roly-poly little man, standing more at 
his ease than his colleagues. On the other side, 
forming an avenue up the slope through which 
the soldiery on the plain could see the function, 
were unattached soldiers and officers. 

The brocade-robed, white-bearded priest wore the 
sword of a samurai — of a Shintoism militant. His 
assistants were two soldiers who had been priests 
before the war began. He, himself, was, in fact, 
the only Shinto priest with the Second Division. 
In the fight at Hamatan, on May ist, where bayonets 
were fixed and there were charges and counter- 
charges, and, finally, a Russian priest led the remnant 
of a regiment out of a cul-de-sac under a murderous 
fire, there was no Japanese priest in attendance. 
The Japanese army has no chaplains. The priests 
who are here come by courtesy and have no official 
position in a force where economy would not per- 
mit the presence of a single man who did not assist 
toward the great material result of efficiency. 

Every Japanese soldier is in a sense his own priest. 
If all national boundaries in Europe were erased 
and the whole took the cross as a flag in the name 
of common deliverance, you would have a parallel 
of the different Japanese provinces suddenly united 
by the reformation under the common banner of 



A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD 113 

race and faith. The red centre of the Japanese 
emblem stands for the birth of the Imperial ancestor 
from the loins of the Sun Goddess. The Emperor, 
then, is the deity of this cult of folklore; faith and 
patriotism and militant racial impulse are united 
in one. God is country and country is God in the 
person of the Emperor. 

When the priest came forward and waved his 
wand of white paper streamers over the Prince and 
the staff, and over the multitude in khaki, it is safe 
to say that not one of the officers standing there really 
believed in this exorcism of the evil spirits any 
more than the average European General Staff 
believes that the whale swallowed Jonah. They 
did believe in the rising sun on the flag, in the 
Emperor, in their country. According to their creed, 
the Emperor had given them life and position and 
whatsoever they held dear in this world, and it was 
their duty to return gallantly, unhesitatingly that 
which he had given whenever the call should come. 
If logic made them doubt his divinity, their hearts 
felt the illusion completely. 

From the little enclosure at one side, made of 
sections of soldiers' tents, the assistant priests 
brought other offerings — of sake (the Japanese 
wine), of sweets — which the priest held up before 



114 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the officers and the army and blessed, and then 
deposited on the stand left vacant for the purpose. 
When the stand was overflowing the priests fell 
back, and General Nishi, unbending, his face a 
Japanese mask of parchment, advanced and unrolled 
a thick sheet of paper as big as a pillow-case (of 
the same sort as that from which I saw the Emperor 
read his address opening the Diet). If the sheet 
was large, the characters were large also and the 
words few. In a voice of quiet monotone, he read 
his speech commemorating the dead. 

It was a good speech; almost a great speech, 
even disregarding the eloquence of the situation, for 
a soldier to make. As between it and the speech 
of the average Russian general on a similar occasion, 
good taste was all on the side of the Japanese. In 
spite of the fact that Shintoism conceives no definite 
immortality, he addressed the fallen as if they were 
actually present. He would not have been a Japanese 
if he had not politely apologized for the meagreness 
of the offerings. 

Without definitely saying so, he nevertheless 
spoke the thought of how for the first time the 
Japanese army had met European foes, and, for 
the first time on trial before the world, had over- 
come a valiant enemy in a position strong by nature 



A TRIBUTE TO THE DEAD 115 

and strengthened by art. Now this army's courage 
was /^whittled to the very edge/' he said. He 
bade the "sweet souls" of the fallen to rest in peace, 
conscious that they should never be forgotten; 
they had served the faith. Fame! The hope of 
being ever remembered by their friends and their 
family as having died for Japan — that is the immor- 
tality which calls the Japanese in place of the houris 
of the Mohammedan. Fame and the faith (which 
is country)! — there again you have the explanation 
of the military marvel of the Orient. 

When he had finished, first the Prince and then 
the General, followed by all the ofiicers and the 
foreign military attaches, brought sprigs of ever- 
greens tied by ribbons of white paper and deposited 
them in rapt silence on another stand that had been 
set in front of the one which held the offerings that 
had been specially blessed. Then the troop of bu- 
glers, who stood in the centre of the troops, blew a 
fanfare. In thirds and fifths, it was discordant to 
the ears of the Occidental. But to the Japanese it 
was musical and inspiring, perhaps. Then the three 
regiments of infantry, the regiment of artillery (with- 
out their guns), the regiment of cavalry, and the 
engineers moved as one body. They have changed 
their blue uniforms to khaki, but the color of their 



Ii6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

blankets and their accoutrements remains the same. 
Pacing the hill in close order, they looked like raised 
sections of dry, brown earth. Turning, their blanket 
rolls showed. One moment we beheld the dull un- 
der side, the next like the upper side, of a varie- 
gated carpet. 

A Buddhist priest came in front of the sanctuary 
and set down a burner smoking with incense. Here 
was the suggestion of a great soul religion like 
Catholicism. A few, in easy attitudes, watched him 
through the elaborate, meaning service while the 
soldiers went streaming back to their quarters along 
the roads. The heart religion of sceptical, ma- 
terialistic, subtle, martial Japan is the folklore of 
her fathers. Buddhism is the dilettante faith of 
individual devotees. But the faith of youth and 
war is Emperor and country. Shintoism is inher- 
ent, official. The Emperor is a Shintoist. Beside 
the ceremony that had preceded it, the Buddhist 
service was like a prayer in the anteroom after 
formal prayer in official session. 



XII 

THREE DIVISIONS ON THREE ROADS 

Converging columns must wait each upon the 
progress of the others to the tune of the master's 
plans. General Nishi said last night that we should 
rest here during to-day. The Second Division 
follows the Peking Road through the Motien Pass, 
which is the Thermopylae between Feng-wang-cheng 
and Liaoyang. The Twelfth follows parallel wagon 
paths to the north, and the Imperial Guards par- 
allel wagon paths to the south. Beyond this, the 
whole of Kuroki's army, are other Japanese armies 
stretching to the railroad itself and barring the sea 
from the Russians with practically an intact line of 
bayonets. Drawn toward the centre, the forces of 
either side which have fought in isolated battles 
will be united. 

For six weeks we marked time at Feng-wang-cheng, 

counting the days till the beginning of the rainy 

season from which all time in the East is reckoned. 

The Chinese calendar sets the date as July loth. The 

last weeks of June were at hand. We began to ask 

117 



Ii8 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

if we were not going to Liaoyang after all ? In the 
stagnation of an army in the field in camp, which 
the contrast of the nervous excitement of an army 
in movement makes the more deadening, the corre- 
spondent waited, knowing only that, once the down- 
pour began, movement was possible only to an army 
of herculean energy. The flash of information 
that was our deliverance came like the flash of light- 
ning out of a blue sky, as it always does from the 
armor-clad secrecy of military staffs. With it came 
all details, too, as usual. The precise hour was 
named when the division headquarters would pass 
the grove where I had become as settled in my tent 
as in a manor house. It is dawn at four, and soon 
after we heard the tread of infantry and the clank 
of their accoutrements. At eight on the morning of 
June 24th, to be exact — ^just at eight to the minute 
announced — General Nishi, riding as the point of 
the wedge with his staff behind him, made an interval 
of isolation in a division's passing. 

Behind the staff were some strange-looking men, 
indeed, such as Marco Polo never described in his 
travels. They rode big geldings, suitably provided 
by the Government, and they were big themselves, 
and, though clad in different habits, they seemed to 
the army itself to have been poured out of the same 




Copyright, jgo4^ by Collier's Weekly. 

On the road to Liaoyang, 



THREE DIVISIONS ON THREE ROADS 119 

mould. Only the keenest slant-eyed observers could 
have seen that they might speak different languages 
and come from different lands. Their distinction 
from the thousands of soldiery and the Chinese (who 
were hoeing the corn which they were just planting 
when we came to Feng-wang-cheng) quite sunk any 
distinction of one from another. 

They had straight eyes and white faces, and 
their hair was not black. The military attaches 
and the correspondents are the albinos of the army. 
More than one private who saw them pass wondered 
how they came to be riding with the General. Let 
them appear on the line of outposts and they would 
be taken for Russians. Only yesterday an English- 
speaking Japanese said to me that he could not tell 
one European from another; that he had heard 
that either nationality could tell an Englishman 
from an American almost at a glance, and he asked 
me if it were true. Therein lies an excuse, if not a 
reason, for not permitting either correspondents or 
military attaches more freedom of movement in the 
field. To bring the comparison home, if the average 
American ofiicer, let alone outpost, could not dis- 
tinguish a Japanese from a Chinese or a Korean, 
with hair cut the same way and wearing much the 
same kind of clothes, he would take no risks on the 



I20 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

strength of his judgment. So the attaches ride 
behind the staff and the correspondents behind the 
attaches, and they are the most curious thing about 
this army to the army itself. 

Two or three miles out of Feng - wang - cheng, 
on the bank of the river, a guard of cavalry was 
drawn up. This, the General's escort, completed the 
formation of the headquarters party, whose pace 
was that of the infantry. All the first morning we 
were within the zone of Japanese occupation during 
our rest in camp. The period of waiting had had 
no idle moments for the engineers, who went to 
their work every day with the regularity of mortar 
carriers. 

The heights beyond the town were seamed with 
trenches and cut with roads for the artillery. Not 
one has been required in action. It was not thought 
that they ever would be. Their value was ^^ moral." 
They made fifty thousand men as good as a hundred 
thousand men for defence, and they held safe on 
Kuropatkin's flank an army which could be thrown 
into his rear the moment that he should advance 
with his whole force to the relief of Port Arthur. 
He advanced, with part, with a result that we all 
know. 

When we had gone over the highest of the hills 



THREE DIVISIONS ON THREE ROADS 121 

which hold Feng-wang-cheng in their lap, we left 
the made roads and came again to the old Peking 
Road. Our course wound, with the valley made by 
the stream, which we were continually ford ng, 
and as the course wound, so wound the column and 
their transport. On either hand were mountains, 
ever mountains, pyramidal, sugar-loafed, terraced, 
thick with trees, untouched by art except where the 
Chinese had carried their tillage patches from the 
fertile valley up the slopes. An army with guns 
would be almost as helpless off that road as a fish 
out of water. The one sign of human presence that 
we saw on the heights was a spot where the trees 
had been levelled and a signal staff told of a Rus- 
sian lookout. 

In front of the General was the advance guard, and 
behind, as ahead, the road was as thick with soldiers 
as the hills with trees. In that streak of humanity, 
with its canopy of dust, the only persons that rode 
alone were the General himself and an officer astride 
a kicking horse. Until you see them in column, 
you do not realize what a big force fifteen thousand 
soldiers are, and until you see their transport you do not 
realize what a lot they eat; and until you have ridden 
all day at the rate of arduously marching men you 
do not realize what the pleasure of riding at will is. 



122 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

No stream ever followed its course more closely 
than we this old highway. There was only one 
channel for the current of khaki shoulders. In the 
fields always were the scattered, blue-bloused Chinese 
workmen. Elderly women — I saw no young ones — 
were weeding their gardens in the groups of houses 
dignified with a name on the map where the farming 
folk live. (Those who think of all China as over- 
crowded must overlook this part of Manchuria, which 
is sparsely settled.) The local population had seen 
the Russians go away a few hours before ; they may 
have had to take cover while there was an exchange 
of shots. If so, there was time wasted, and they 
must work that much harder to make up for it. They 
did not take the trouble to look up at the thousands 
of madmen who, according to their thinking, were 
chasing thousands of other madmen playing at a 
madman's game. The General was only a mounted 
man to them. A runner on a bicycle interested them 
far more. 

The earnestness with which everything in the 
column's progress was done alone bespoke the fact 
that we were not on a route march. Always we 
were hearing of the Russians just ahead. The 
first sign we had of their existence was on the second 
day, when we saw on a knoll half a dozen big, blond- 



THREE DIVISIONS ON THREE ROADS 123 

haired men in gray caps. These were a "point" 
that had been betrayed into the arms of Japanese 
scouts by a false Chinese guide, I was told. They 
had every right to be bored, every Japanese surgeon 
who passed stopping to offer them some attention. 
We passed one other wounded Russian in one of the 
springless, jolting Chinese carts. He had been shot 
in his head, which he rested on a pile of sacks under 
the broiling sun. He looked up at our Caucasian 
faces quizzically as if wondering how we could be 
going in the opposite direction when we had been 
captured, too. 

But I set out to write of a march, not of blood- 
shed (of which there was none of account) — a march 
that went like clockwork. Five-sixths of the thought 
of staffs is centred upon getting a soldier rapidly 
along a highway, with sufficient food and ammu- 
nition. The weight of his pack, how it should be 
adjusted, how to keep up his spirits in the face of 
fatigue, the minimum bulk of food which will give 
him nourishment — these were the subject of military 
councils long before the time of Caesar. The soldier 
of every country has his peculiar prejudices and his 
peculiar habits. The Japanese soldier carries only 
forty pounds, as against sixty for the soldiers of 
other countries. Yet in height the Second Division, 



124 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

drawn from the north, where the chmate is severe 
and the human product that survives is sturdy, is not 
far below that of the average French or Itahan regi- 
ment, while in actual carrying capacity the Japanese 
are probably superior. Besides, height is not every- 
thing. The Japanese soldier is never weedy. He is 
built on the square ; he is a buttress instead of a pole. 

His only prejudice is in favor of teapots. These 
he gathers by the way; he is loath also to give up a 
certain type of enamelled cup purchasable in Feng- 
wang-cheng. He not only carries his forty pounds 
to the end of the march, but the end of the march 
finds him in line. Out of the whole division I did 
not see a hundred stragglers on any day. 

We did not make more than half the distance in a 
day of some of the famous route marches of famous 
Continental armies, it is true. But the Continental 
conscript has a macadamized road, while such a sun 
as that which makes the corn grow in a Manchurian 
valley is unknown. This army is not doing a few 
days' show practice. It marched over the icy roads 
of Korea in February, and has been under marching 
conditions ever since, and keeping its health. In 
all weathers it must go on, with its nerve steady at 
any moment for the shock of battle, not for the blank 
volleys of a manoeuvre. 



THREE DIVISIONS ON THREE ROADS 125 

To beat the sun you must rise early. On the 
second morning, when we moved out of Siuehhtien, 
having slept in the open with the heavy dew on our 
faces, the hour set was 5:50. 

"Why not six?" a correspondent asked. "This 
is cutting it as fine as the four-dollar-ninety-nine-cent 
bargain at a department store." 

There was no affectation about this precision. It 
was a part of the system. At 5:50 in the fields be- 
yond the town, with the air still thick with dew 
and the mountains shrouded in mist, we found the 
regiments and the guns, with every last part of the 
equipment of thousands of men, complete and ready 
as those of an intricate machine. 

The foreigners presented themselves to the Gen- 
eral — the General neat and polite — who responded 
with the Japanese smile, and then we mounted and 
fell in behind him and the appointed regiment. In 
an hour the town was as clean of the army as if it 
had never been there, except for the armed guard 
of the "transporters'" corps. 

As we moved over the winding road through the 
mountains, I saw the one thing of the three days 
which did not seem a part of the programme. In some 
other armies, in a march through the enemy's coun- 
try, it would have been one of many little "breaks" 



126 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

regarded as inevitable; here it was as prominent as 
missing his lines by an old actor in a familiar part. 
Some of the "transporters" had taken their carts 
forward into the line of the infantry's march. One 
of the carts was overturned. I wondered if the in- 
fantrymen, with a ''What the devil are you doing up 
here?" had not done the trick in a moment of exas- 
peration. If they had, the " transporters " would 
only have smiled in answer to the question. They 
were smiling, anyway. If the whole army were 
routed what remained would smile. But the smile 
would not be that of carelessness, for all the "broken 
bits" would be studiously gathered in. 

These mornings in the mountains always make 
you think that you are to have an overcast day. Until 
the sun breaks through, quickly dispelling all vapors 
and illusions — then is the day's glorious interval for 
marching. Toward noon, when we stop for an 
hour, the marches are shorter, the rests longer. Nip- 
pon Denji, the man of Japan, has then eaten all the 
rice cooked in the company boilers, and the rations 
of meat and fish supplied him the night before, and 
with "Break ranks," he rushes to the water, where 
he washes his pannikin and the little piece of towelling 
which he always carries, and then wipes the dust 
from his face and neck. At other times he stacks 



THREE DIVISIONS ON THREE ROADS 127 

his rifle and drops his kit and runs to shade, flopping 
himself down on the cool ground like a seal into 
water. The joy of this march thus far is that there 
is always shade and always water. The So River, 
which we crossed and recrossed, is always fordable 
and is fed by mountain springs. 

Our twelve miles a day has been made, too, with 
all baggage keeping pace, and with the advance send- 
ing the enemy before it, and always prepared — this 
solid line of men on the road with hospital corps and 
ammunition ponies bringing up the rear — to attack 
in force should the enemy make a stand. It was 
eleven when we came into Kansautientsz yesterday 
under a sun that was like the open lid of a furnace. 
A regiment of infantry, that had passed many great 
fields of young beans without thought of wasting the 
energy to set foot on them, settled down in a field 
now, illustrating to the owner how thoroughly in 
most cases chance entirely rules the fortunes of war. 
In half an hour this field was trodden down as hard 
as a tennis court. 

The General himself did not know whether or not 
we were going to move any farther that day, but the 
men must be in organization and ready, heat or no 
heat. A soldier is not a veteran until he learns to 
make the most of any conditions. So the infantry- 



128 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

men brought branches from the trees, making the 
field look like a young grove. When the artillery 
came up, the gunners did the same, but kept their 
horses hitched. At four came the word, from the 
authority which was looking toward the progress 
of all columns, that we should be here for two days. 
The groves fell, and the infantrymen marched to the 
right and left to encamp in ravines. Then the whole 
army, including correspondents, settled down for the 
afternoon to wait for the transportation to come up. 

The transportation is always behind the guns — 
the precious guns — force going before the provender 
when there is an enemy in sight. Thus the advance 
may arrive at noon and get its dinner at seven. If 
there is a fight, no one will be thinking of food, and 
seven will be ample time. With no fight, what is 
there for a correspondent to do on an empty stomach 
but lie in the shade and think of the simmer in the 
pan of the bacon which first went to Chicago from 
Nebraska, and then all the way to Manchuria in a 
yellow sack, which you may pack on pony or cart 
through the dust, with never a germ disturbing the 
fatty — oh, too fatty! — inside. 

To-day the army is washing, the surface of the 
river is oily with soap worshipfully and vigorously 
applied. The bushes are hung with garments yes- 



THREE DIVISIONS ON THREE ROADS 129 

terday steeped in the sweat of conquest. The privi- 
leged few who can "rustle" native caldrons will get 
hot baths — that supreme luxury which every Jap- 
anese has daily at home — which means to him what 
jam does to an Englishman, sauerkraut to a Ger- 
man, and pie to an American when struggling over 
roads in pursuit of armed men in a strange land. 

To-morrow Nippon Denji will stroll about camp 
as fresh as a daisy. He will look in at my tent door, 
and watch the strange being with blond hair and 
big nose who is writing about his exploits. He is 
bearable even in his curiosity because he is quite 
the cleanest soldier in the world. 

P. S. — June 28th. — Nippon Denji did little stroll- 
ing to-day, for it came on to rain as hard as the 
sun shone yesterday. The dry bed of the So became 
a channel for a torrent, and the soil of the valley 
seemed to spurt water like a sponge from the pressure 
of your foot. But the army is doing its work in 
waterproofs just the same as if the day were fair. 
Bad weather cannot spoil the flavor of the news 
which concerns Nippon Denji personally and all 
the world internationally. The Russians have evac- 
uated Motienling. Now, Motienling, as I have 
already noted, is the pass of Thermopylae on the 
road to Liaoyang. 



XIII 

FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 

LiENSHANKWAN IS the first collection of houses 
this side of the watershed which separates the valley 
of the Yalu from the valley of the Liao. Swarms 
of flies hover over the mire, which steams when the 
sun shines and turns liquid when it rains. Belated 
ditching cannot at once offset the evil heritage of 
Cossack horses quartered in yards and courts. 

In the four days that our headquarters has been 
here we have heard a few spurts of rifle fire, while 
the occasional prisoner and occasional wounded man 
brought in have indicated simply that the enemy 
has been keeping in touch with our column. With 
an army of consequence these are as much common- 
places as outpost duty itself, and little skirmishes 
become what ^^ warming-up practice" is to an out- 
door game. To-day, Collins, Hare, and I, three 
Americans, who mess and tent together, had planned 
to celebrate the Fourth to the best of our limited 
resources. For the flag, possibly the only one float- 
ing in Manchuria on the famous day, we had raised 

an especially high standard. 

130 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 131 

But at the breaking of light the long report of 
volleys came over the hills. When they had con- 
tinued for half an hour the call became irresistible. 
So saddles were thrown on to our horses while we 
breakfasted. It was a little early to ask the staff 
for the chaperon, who signifies when and where we 
may move. Besides, it was our national holiday, 
and we proposed to ride forward, dependent upon 
the courtesy of the officers in the field. Finally we 
found that we had not counted unwisely on our 
host. 

It was our good fortune and our novel experience 
as correspondents with this column to come upon the 
scene of action when it was fresh. What I saw — 
so creditable was it to Japanese courage and acumen 
and Japanese humanity — made me wonder more than 
ever why correspondents have been denied the privi- 
leges of the actual front. There are many games 
in the strife of individuals and nations, but none 
was ever more intense than that played near the 
old and the new temples of Kwantei this morning. 

The pass itself which the Russians attempted to 
take is seven miles from the town. We had looked 
forward to Motienling for a great battle. In Tokio 
we heard, again on the march we heard, that the 
Russians would here make their most determined 



132 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

defence. Japanese strategy forced evacuation with- 
out a shot. 

The old road leading to the summit is macadam- 
ized in Nature's way with the rocks and stones which 
the freshets have not carried away. You climb 
upward to an opening some fifty feet deep, and here 
is the Thermopylae of Manchuria — nothing more or 
less than a cut in a fan-shaped series of hills, more 
defensible from the Yalu side than the Liao side. 
On the banks two companies of infantry that had 
marched fast on sudden call were resting. The 
sound of volleys could still be heard. It had travelled 
with us — proof enough that the reinforcements were 
not needed. 

All we could see was the verdure-clad mountains 
on every hand, and the sappers at work on the road 
that wound around the base of a spur in front of us. 
This we followed. It led us down into a valley and 
around the base of another spur and to an open 
place occupied by a big temple of gray bricks. This 
was built by the Chinese after the war with Japan, 
because the gods of another temple, it was thought, 
had prevented the Japanese from taking the road 
over the pass. Thus deity got its reward, while gen- 
erals who failed might save themselves from decapi- 
tation by suicide. 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 133 

Now the Red Cross flag was tied to the portals, and 
on the massive granite steps General Okasaki, com- 
manding the troops that had been engaged, was receiv- 
ing and despatching messages, while the field telegraph 
wire (run in from the road), with its streamers of 
paper warning horseback riders, passed over his head 
to the operator in the court. At the side entrance a 
litter was being borne in. Within the sanctuary, the 
feet of one of the giant blue-and-white-robed gods with 
hideous face furnished a head rest for a dying soldier. 

In the living apartments of the priest and in the 
court, the wounded had great Russian overcoats 
thrown over them, and you knew by the size of the 
man, or by the heavy Russian boots which protruded 
underneath, whether the stricken one was of the 
enemy or not. All belligerency was out of the minds 
of those who had lunged and thrust and fenced in 
darkness with bayonets an hour before. They were 
now in the one family of the helpless. The orders 
of the General on the steps, standing for the voice of 
health and strength, were as quiet as the movements 
of the surgeon, who knew no side and no country in 
his work. The Chinese priest who looked blankly 
on had the proof (in his logic) of the inferiority to 
his own of the Russian deity, which had failed where 
his had succeeded. 



134 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

We rode on to the original temple of the highly 
successful god, where you felt as near the scene of 
action as you do when hastening to a fire and you 
come to a side street blocked with fire-engines and 
hose. On the steps were two Russian prisoners 
with their guard. They looked like men who had 
wakened in the morning surprised to find themselves 
alive. After passing through hell they were in the 
quiet of a mountain temple yard surrounded by 
tokens of their enemy's success. The line had gone 
on, leaving safety for the stricken. 

Beyond the temple the road cuts through the 
grove. Out of its shadow, as I turned my horse in 
this direction, came a dead Japanese brought on 
four crossed sticks. He still seemed to be holding 
his rifle fast; his limbs were in the position held 
when instant death came; one hand was at the 
trigger, the other on the rifle stock; one leg was bent 
in the act of taking another step toward the foe. 
A hundred yards farther on the road breaks into open 
ground. This sweeps down in an apron to a long 
valley which ends in mountain terraces. With a 
road and a creek bed at the bottom, the valley is cut 
like a trough between two rows of high green hills. 
Where the ascent to another pass begins gleam the 
white sides of a pagoda. At this place, on the pre- 




Copyright, jgo4, by Collier's Weekly. 

General Okasaki on the steps of the Temple of Kwantei the morning of 
the first attack on Motien Pass. 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 135 

vious day, the Russians had had their advance out- 
post. On the Japanese side, to the right of the road, 
at the base of the first hill on the north, the Japanese 
had had their advance outpost of thirty-six men in a 
Chinese farmhouse. 

Thus far, then, the sensitive finger-point of the 
First Army had felt its way for the protection and 
the information of the main body behind it. Both 
sides had their pickets, of course, and the zone be- 
tween them was combed by the indefatigable Jap- 
anese scouts. Behind the big hill to the north of 
the outpost was a Japanese company in support; 
at the old temple in the grove was the company of 
which the outpost was a section. At the new temple 
were two companies in reserve covering effectively 
other roads besides that through the valley. 

On the night of the 3d a battalion of the Twenty- 
fourth Regiment of Siberian Sharpshooters and a 
battalion of the Tenth Regiment of Siberian Sharp- 
shooters (making 2,000 in all) were formed under 
shelter of the hills of the far end of the valley. These 
men were principally Siberian reservists. Of this 
type of former soldiers and migrants I once heard 
a Russian general say: 

"There, sir, we have a force to defend Siberia— 
in these hardy setders, living an outdoor life, know- 



136 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ing how to fight in a wild country. They have 
been in the army. They can ride a.nd shoot. Our 
giants would make short work of the Httle fellows 
from Japan. But Japan will not be so foolish — 
never!" 

While he was indulging in such toploftiness over 
vodka and cigarettes, the little fellows who fought 
this morning were smiling, smiling, smiling, and 
drilling, drilling, drilling, and their officers studying, 
studying, studying. 

One of the captured non-commissioned Russian 
officers said that they thought the pass was lightly 
held, and they hoped to surprise its occupants. The 
surprise was of the nature that the elephant gives 
the man who puts an express bullet into its brain. 
It was conceived on information as inadequate as 
the elephant had. 

At shortly after three the front of the Russian 
column bayoneted the Japanese picket who had at 
first in the darkness mistaken its advance for one of 
the Japanese patrols which were continually coming 
and going. This was at the ravine behind the big 
hill, which is transverse with the road. Here the 
battalion of the Twenty-fourth went in reserve be- 
hind the big hill. With them were their lumber- 
ing boilers on wheels, so that the men could have 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 137 

hot soup when they reoccupied MotienHng. The 
battahon of the Tenth, without scouts or flankers, 
proceeded in column along the narrow valley road. 
Skobeleff used to do this sort of thing against the 
Turks, who had no outposts and only mass dispo- 
sitions. 

The lieutenant in charge of the thirty-six men in 
the farmhouse had heard the belated challenge of 
his picket, and stuck his head out of the window 
to see the Russian column. His men sprang out 
with their rifles and ammunition and the clothes 
they were sleeping in. They fastened themselves 
on the head of the column with the clear-eyed fury 
of a mongoose. They had no idea of the numbers 
of the enemy. They saw forms and knew they were 
Russians. It did not occur to them to run, let alone 
surrender. 

It was not worth while to shoot. Their natural 
instinct is to '^ close in" like torpedo-boats. They 
used their bayonets. They held on, like a small 
tackier holding on to the giant who is struggling on 
with the ball. Their gallantry turned their own 
surprise into a surprise for the Russians. They 
forced the Russians to deploy; they unnerved that 
long column marching peacefully — especially the 
men in the darkness to the rear. Indeed, they paved 



138 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the way for the eventual Russian demorahzation. 
In extricating his men from the melee, the lieutenant 
had to act as one of Caesar's might in reforming a 
section of a legion which was broken and fighting 
desperately; the hand-to-hand conditions were the 
same, and all that was of use on the modern long- 
range rifle was the piece of cold steel at its barrel's 
end. 

But he succeeded in leading those who were not 
killed or wounded to the crest of the apron-like slope 
from the red temple grove's edge. There they act- 
ually formed a line. Many of the twenty survivors 
were cut and slashed, but all were game. While the 
thousand Russians deployed in a kind of swarm- 
ing irregularity over rough ground, the twenty waited 
for them on the one hand, and for support to come 
up on the other. 

Enough shots had been fired to warn the company 
behind the hill near the outpost and the company 
in the grove by the old temple. They assembled 
and charged toward the sound of the firing. Beyond 
the grove facing the valley, and on the opposite side 
of the road, the Japanese had made some trenches. 
The Russians were already across these when the 
first company emerged from the grove. The Jap- 
anese fired and then clinched. It was still so dark 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 139 

that the form of a man could be made out only a 
few feet away. The Russians came up straggling, 
but with the power of ten to one. The Japanese 
were in perfect company order. For half an hour 
they held their ground with cold steel alone, the 
officers using their swords — that of Lieutenant Kono 
was nicked like a saw afterward. The momentum 
of numbers alone should have borne them back. But 
there was no light, and the Russian soldier is stupid. 
When the head of the column stopped, the rear 
stopped also. All the four Japanese companies 
engaged belonged to the first battalion of the regi- 
ment — the first being at the old temple, the third 
behind the big hill, and the second and fourth at the 
new temple in reserve. The third, being farther 
away than the first, came up a little later and formed 
on the slope of the big hill to the right of the first. 
The twenty of the outpost were still standing their 
ground. The lieutenant saw he was in the way 
of his own company's fire. Such was his control 
over his men after their ordeal that he led them to 
the rear and formed them in a flanking position on 
the left of his own company, which soon after day- 
light had gained the trench on the other side of the 
road. 

And now the second company came up to the 



140 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

assistance of the other two. With some of the 
thousand Russians still hanging on the slope, the 
mass were still at its foot. They had taken no op- 
portunity of ground except to find cover. The 
battalion of the Twenty-fourth — with its soup ket- 
tles, remember — was still doing nothing in the ravine 
behind the big hill. When the battalion of the Tenth 
fell back under the flanking and plunging fire, 
they could have re-formed with the Twenty-fourth 
and had two thousand men against five hundred. 
Instead, this surprise party, which was going to eat 
its lunch in Motienling, piled on down the valley, 
and at six o'clock the Japanese were pursuing. By 
this time the Japanese Major Takakusagi knew 
all about the Russians, their numbers and position, 
even if the Russians did not know about him. The 
Russian battalion of the Twenty-fourth, which was 
in reserve, could come around the hill and onto the 
flank of the little Japanese force. One company 
was kept behind to guard against this possibility. 

This it did by getting above the battalion and 
dropping bullets into the party of the soup wagons. 
So the Twenty-fourth — and its soup wagons — re- 
treated too, and the lot were chased by one-fourth 
of their numbers right away to the white pagoda. 

When you went over the field and saw the dispo- 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 141 

sition which the Japanese had made of their advance 
force, it was perfect. That is much, and yet there 
is something that counts more — perfection in mobiHty. 
Far away is that cry that the Japanese were merely 
copyists. This is a terrene far different to that of 
their own land. They have evolved a system of 
their own for it. Considering that the Russians are 
Russians, they were wise not to go on. If they had, 
the prisoners and booty they would have lost would 
have been accordingly large. 

To the limit the Japanese knows his enemy; to 
the limit he knows his ground; he knows that he 
can depend upon any force of Japanese, however 
small, not to lose its nerve; and, finally, his troops 
have the verve and the mobility to make his dispo- 
sitions effective. We smile now when we think of our 
fears about the Japanese cavalry ; better than cavalry 
is it to have the Russians blunder along the valleys 
while we catch them from the hills. But the Jap- 
anese himself is never caught in the valley. 

All the above is from descriptions on the spot from 
the Japanese officers and from prisoners. When I 
arrived, shortly after nine, firing could still be heard 
from the end of the valley near the white pagoda, 
and as you came out of the grove of the old temple 
into the open, the near scene — tragically witnessing 



142 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

defeat, gloriously witnessing a marvellous little vic- 
tory — did not permit you even to look the length of 
the green-walled valley. Here was the aftermath of 
action still reeking. The two companies that had 
first met the attack had broken ranks. Their rifles 
were stacked by the roadside. The field was theirs; 
their duty, to carry in the wounded and bury the dead. 
Parties armed with spades were already departing 
for their grim work. On the road itself still lay 
several of the Russian dead and wounded, these 
being distinguishable instantly by their size, their 
dark uniforms, and their big caps. 

Apart were three more wounded, with an unhurt 
Russian Red Cross man among them. He was 
seated in the dust, his arms resting on his knees. He 
followed the foreigners blankly by rolling his eyes, 
not by turning his head. Otherwise, I saw no sign 
of interest on his part during half an hour. He was 
a moujik before he went into the army, doubtless, 
and the crassness of a moujik, that pawn of autoc- 
racy, I shall not attempt to make the reader under- 
stand. He had come up a hill in the dark, he and 
his big, stupid comrades. The priests had probably 
told them that they were going to great victory; 
they were to play the Japanese a smart trick. Then 
the column had become demoralized with the sud- 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 143 

den descent of a swarm of human hornets in the 
night. The Hght had broken to find him among 
these strange, slant-eyed httle men, who have al- 
ready excited Russian superstition to the point of 
believing that the Japanese are veritable demons 
for cunning and shooting. It is hard to keep up 
confidence in your God when you are always being 
beaten. When the light came he was alone with his 
wounded, and the Japanese, observing the red 
cross on his arm, did not march him away with the 
other prisoners, but properly left him to look after 
his own. This was now beyond him. He did not 
seem to realize that the suffering man next to him 
was trying vainly to ease his position without help 
till a Japanese surgeon gave it. When you knew 
him and knew Russia, his stupefaction was ex- 
plainable. 

While the wounded waited for the litters, which 
went laden to the new temple and returned empty, 
the Japanese infantrymen appointed for the purpose 
were separating and cataloguing the equipment that 
had fallen into the victor's hands. You had only 
to look at this for further explanation of the marvel 
of the morning. In contrast to the aluminium can- 
teen of the Japanese was the iron-bound, unsani- 
tary wooden water-bottle of the Russian. Instead 



144 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

of the aluminium pannikin, light, compact, portable, 
was the bag of brown bread and the two-quart 
bucket with no attachment for the belt except the 
bail. In place of the carefully fitted shoes and 
tight leggings, admitting of rapid movement, were 
the clumsy boots, too big for comfort or for getting 
a firm foothold on rough ground. 

The Russians had come in their clumsy gray 
overcoats, which tripped their legs when their boots 
did not, as if they were going to the rear instead 
of into a critical action in the darkness, where mo- 
bility and surefootedness are first principles. Be- 
sides this, the Russian's trousers were all too big, 
as was his coat. Everything about him was like a 
paternal muffler, putting him at the disadvantage of a 
man swimming in an ulster and gum boots. The 
contest was that of a gamecock and a big brahma. 
The feet of one runs to spurs and the other to feathers. 

The Russian had come to count on his weight. 
Let the Little Father and the priests give the word 
and he would lumber on over the savages. The 
Japanese has been training mind and muscle to 
meet an adversary of great reputation. His first 
shock of surprise at Russian slowness and stupidity 
has passed. What he did this morning he now re- 
gards as the natural thing. He now has the confi- 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 145 

dence as well as the skill. His possible error is 
that he may think that other Occidental armies are 
like the Russian. 

Looking from the trench to the field, you saw 
prostrate forms, the splotch of white bandages show- 
ing where they had been hit, or if they had none 
the surgeon had come to them too late. Parties 
with spades were going about the field searching 
in the bushes, and when they came to a fallen 
Russian, bending over him and then passing on or 
beginning to dig a hole, which in a few minutes was 
replaced by a mound with a stone or stick which 
said in Japanese characters that a certain soldier 
of a certain Russian regiment was buried there. 

There was one wounded Russian still lying on 
the field whose proper destiny is emigration to 
America. He alone of his comrades had not lost 
his humor or his faculties for occupation. When 
I approached him he was rolling a cigarette. At 
sight of an Occidental face his blue eyes twinkled 
and his even white teeth, polished by black bread, 
showed in a smile of recognition. 

'^ Speak English?" he asked. 

''Yes. Do you?" I responded eagerly. 

"No," said he. ''Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" 
Do you?" I asked. 



iC 



146 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

"Nein!" Then he asked me about the French in 
the same way. Here was his little j oke, and he laughed 
over it heartily, just as if he did not have a bullet hole 
through the thick of his leg which had bled profusely. 

When I returned from the field this Ivan Ivano- 
vitch of Kharkoff was holding a reception. His 
Japanese friends had made him a stone rest with 
boughs for a cushion. There was no need of his 
rolling cigarettes now. He had a row of them and 
other offerings by his right hand, and he had been 
offered drink out of water-bottles until he could not 
swallow another drop. One of the dozen around him 
evidently spoke a good deal of Russian. Ivan told 
them where he lived, and he laughed and joked, but 
for such an intelligent fellow he was most stupid 
about the morning's operations and the number of 
troops engaged. On the strength of his smile, Ivan 
would get on an3rwhere in the world. Earlier I 
had seen a wounded Japanese who, too, had that 
gift of good cheer which must have made him a 
rallying point of camaraderie. Half a dozen were 
accompanying his litter. In the pauses they bent 
over him caressingly and kept away the flies. He 
was badly hit, but still he was smiling. 

A dozen rods away from Ivan was another Russian 
who had the top of his head gashed v/ith a bullet. 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 147 

Out of his mind, he would try to rise, and then again 
he would try to find his rifle and his accoutrements. 
The next man I came to had escaped death by the 
narrowest margin. The bullet had passed between 
the carotid artery and the jugular vein. Without 
bleeding much, he had a very stiff and very sore 
neck. Two Japanese infantrymen had appointed 
themselves his guardians, and were escorting him 
slowly up the road. One was for making him as 
comfortable as possible and waiting till he could be 
carried back; the other argued that litters were few, 
and he had better be walked to the old temple, and 
this view prevailed. 

On their way they stopped to give a drink to a 
Russian who had been shot through the abdomen. 
He was groaning terribly. The Russian, having less 
self-control than other Occidentals — being in fact, as 
the Czar calls him, only a great, pap-fed child — gives 
way to his feelings more than the average European 
soldier. Particularly would a Japanese who was still 
conscious try to bear his suffering in silence in the 
presence of the enemy. Such is his complexion and 
the impassiveness of his face — at least to the Occi- 
dental — that he does not show his loss of blood. So 
militant is his nature that he seems to relax less in 
death than his enemy. 



148 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

To the country boys who compose this column 
and have seen few foreigners except tourists who 
have strayed off the beaten track, the Russian is 
strange in dress, strange in feature, and very white. 
When the Russian is pale, his whiteness becomes 
spectral to Oriental eyes; and when the big, pale 
Russian groans the Japanese stands back a little 
from him, awed, uncomprehending, and looking 
more helpless than I have ever seen him under 
other conditions. Eventually, he tries the water- 
bottle and to make a pillow for the suffering man's 
head with boughs. That is what he would want 
himself; and that is what the Russian wants, too. 

By noon there were mounds over most of the 
still figures which I had seen on my arrival, and 
the wounded had been carried back. Only the 
fresh spaces of earth six feet long, the grass trampled 
here and there, and the trench sprinkled with empty 
cartridge shells reminded one of the fight. The 
rifles of the company were still stacked, and the men 
were still on leave, wandering about at will as they 
would in the streets of a garrison town at home, 
while some were still busy counting the rifles, the 
cartridge cases, and the tin buckets which the enemy 
had left behind. 

In a little war this affair would have been made 



FIRST ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 149 

the subject of songs in the music halls and poems 
in the evening papers. In military parlance it was 
a disastrous attempt to rush an outpost under cover 
of darkness. That sounds as proper and formal as 
calling out the guard. In fact, it was a struggle 
with cold steel between opponents armed with rifles 
that carry 2,500 yards; in fact, it had all the human 
elements and all the strategy, tactics, and unex- 
pected contingencies of a battle compressed within 
the limits of the immediate comprehension of eye 
and mind. 



XIV 

SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 

It is noon. The morning's great work is nearly 
finished. The Kttle infantryman who sprang from 
his blankets in the night to arms, the charge and the 
hazard of death, bends his back to the hot sun as he 
climbs the hills with the zip of bullets in his ears, 
his temples throbbing, his legs grown laggard from 
weariness, the voice of hunger bidding him stop 
while the voice of his officer bids him go on. 

The pursued Russian, equally the sport of weari- 
ness and fatigue, has a heart of lead. This beaten 
giant, stupid and soft-muscled, who marched through 
the darkness confidently to a daylight surprise, now 
dragging himself wearily over the slopes, has left 
behind on the ground dedicated to the success of a 
superior genius he cannot comprehend, blanket rolls, 
intrenching tools, dried clots of blood on the grass, 
and his dead. 

One side prays for more strength to carry his vic- 
tory home; the other for more strength to assure 

escape and for time to bring in his wounded. The 

150 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 151 

combat has become the chase of the hare by the fox 
— tired fox, tired hare, and burning sun! But the 
fox is not after his dinner. That is in his pannikin. 
Where Knes of rifles strive with Hnes of rifles, 
suspense holds minutes in the balance until they have 
the weight of days. Now the air is clear and the 
shimmer of heat waves rises from the valley. The 
damp and chill early morning when the fog hung 
long in the lowlands and longer in the high places, 
seems instead of a few hours away to belong to 
another season if not another epoch; for we have 
seen what is a triumph to one empire and a tragedy 
to another enacted between breakfast and luncheon. 

*^ *1^ ^^ '^ *^ *l* 

*y« 'I* ^ "T* <f* *il^ 

The battle began as soon as the light would allow 
enemy to distinguish enemy. There is no call like 
that which dawn sent over the high hills of the divide 
to Lienshankwan at their feet. It puts a prickle 
into the fingers' ends, wine into the veins, and a 
tempest of restlessness and curiosity into the brain. 
With batteries passing to the front, with ammunition 
ponies and stretcher-bearers on the run, with an 
army in all its carefully adjusted parts responding 
with nervous alacrity to a sudden summons, with 
the pounding of distant guns and the crackle of dis- 
tant rifle-fire whipping our impatience, we foreigners 



152 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

waited outside headquarters for two hours before 
we were told that we might go. 

Of the ride over MotienHng, seven miles from the 
town, I have already written in my account of the 
Russian attack of July 4th. Again the current of all 
things flowed toward the front. Except staff officers 
and orderlies, we passed no one going in the opposite 
direction until we met a small body of infantr3^men 
coming leisurely back. Each showed somewhere 
about his upper extremities a patch of white bandage. 
This man had a hole through his trigger hand; that 
one a slash in the head where the hair-breadth's 
variation of a bullet's course would have meant death. 
In the first general marshalling of casualties the 
slightly wounded had been dressed and tagged, and 
sent to the base hospital on their own feet. They 
had seen the Russians run, they had the honor of a 
wound, and they might take their time. 

When we reached the pass it was deserted and 
silent. The firing still sounded two or three miles 
away. Around the first slope and then up another 
slope, and then into a valley, and then up another 
slope we went, and there on the road we saw little 
sprays of empty cartridge cases gleaming under 
our horses' feet. These said that the line had gone 
on; they spoke of victory. A blanket roll which 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 153 

its owner had dropped in his flight told us, too, that 
the Russians had come at least this far. 

Breaking through the underbrush above the road, 
we tethered our horses. From this eminence we 
could see a Japanese line on a hill a mile or more 
away. This we recognized by the glint of the offi- 
cers' swords. In this clash of modern arms all that 
we could distinguish faintly — and that through pow- 
erful glasses — were some men hugging a hill as if 
they were trying to keep out of the rain. Their rifles 
were invisible ; there was no smoke, of course. Only 
by the crackle that came from their direction did 
we know that they were firing. 

At the new temple of Kwantei at the base of the 
slope were groups of officers of brigade and division 
staffs; some signal corps men were carrying still 
another wire across the field from this nerve centre of 
action. 

^'To see! To see, and not get killed, and have 
something worth while for this article!" that was 
as much the central thought of the correspondent 
as driving the enemy back had been the central 
thought of every Japanese from general down, when 
dawn developed a hostile force in front of the pass. 

More firing seemed to come from the left than from 
the right. To our left was the grove surrounding 



154 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the old temple. So we made in that direction. The 
blood of a dead Russian whom I passed in the open 
was already black and dry. In the woods the blood 
was still wet and red. Running as fast as the Rus- 
sians had when they fled, Captain March of our army, 
Captain Vincent of the British, and myself kept on 
past the temple and followed a path which brought 
us into the open, where we found some protection 
from the few bullets that came our way. 

Above us a company of Japanese in a trench were 
as industriously at work as the ladies of a sewing 
circle. At first I could not see their objective, from 
which probably they had never lifted their sight 
from the moment they had begun the pursuit; then 
on a bushy knob I made out the dark gray figures of 
the mark — not more than a thousand yards away. 
Below us on the valley road was the deserted limber 
of some Russian battery which had had no time to 
spare when the knitting-machine in the trench caught 
men and horses with a plunging fire. 

Above the sound of the rifle-fire came the calls of 
two stragglers for their lost company; and from the 
ridge on our left came the reassuring answer of com- 
panies found. One fine-looking private was about 
to plunge through the woods toward his comrades, 
when I looked up to see a bullet hit a leaf just in front 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 155 

of his face. He threw back his head with a sudden 
halt as one does when he enters the wrong room at 
a hotel. ^^Oh!" he exclaimed, then straightened up, 
smiled his Japanese smile and went on. The way 
in which he and all the others had called signified 
that they were not stragglers from choice; they were 
as anxious to "arrive" as a guest who is late to dinner. 
The company which was making its way to the 
top of this ridge lay down on its crest covering our 
flank. We gave them only an occasional thought 
and an occasional glance; for the work of the mo- 
ment was being done on another slope beyond. 
There the officers' swords heliographed their presence 
among the trees and bushes at the top, and there I 
saw the red-sunned flag of Japan held well out of 
sight of the enemy. The Russians were on the next 
ridge, where we saw the spaces between the trees 
darkened by the movement of an occasional figure. 
The Japanese, hugging their advantage while they 
raked the Russians with rifle-fire, directly began to 
advance by rushes. After a time we noticed some 
figures on the slope beneath the Russians. It was 
like fighting from housetop to housetop, and it seemed 
as if the enemy ought to have picked off our skirmish- 
ers one by one. The Japanese made no rigid lines; 
they were not hidebound by text-book particularities. 



156 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Yet these were men of the same division that I saw 
move with such regularity and precision across the 
sandy river bottom of the Yalu on May ist. 

Now they had a wholly different task, and they 
adapted themselves to it. They had been at home 
on the river bottom ; they seemed a little more at home 
on the uneven hillside, where every inequality speaks 
a language to the tired man advancing under fire. 
This dip with its partial cover may save a life; that 
rise may prove to be the skyline of killing accuracy. 
So the units (under cover of the fire from their sup- 
port on the ridge at their back), never for a moment 
losing the aspect of a choate whole, got up the hill 
with the least exposure possible. A squad or a sec- 
tion seems to have the same tactical sagacity as a 
company or a battalion. Panther-like, it will creep 
up till it is on a rise where it will catch the enemy's 
line at an angle. Smokeless powder is the cover 
of its cunning. The Russian, easily demoralized, 
only knows that he is under a flank fire whose source 
he cannot discern, whose amount he usually over- 
estimates. 

The whole habit of life of the Japanese at home 
fits him for this hill work. When he sits he never 
uses a chair, but squats. Watch a group of staff 
officers in the open, and naturally they drop to 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 157 

their haunches and lay the map on the turf. Thus 
they rest as comfortably as Europeans would in 
chairs. Lying in a trench, his suppleness enables 
Nippon Denji to hug the trench closely and thus 
get a steady aim in a position which is strained and 
unnatural for the European — especially for Ivan 
Ivanovitch, the big, clumsy Russian. In the field 
Nippon Denji can drop as easily as a setter dog, and 
rise with the same spring when he rushes forward 
for another interval. His stature gives him the 
favor of mathematical probability; his nimbleness 
increases this. 

The ideal modern soldier would be an acrobatic, 
highly intelligent pygmy who could shoot accurately 
and carry his rifle, his rations, and his hundred 
rounds of ammunition, and march as fast as the 
next. When Ivan Ivanovitch — he of the boots, 
the sloppy trousers, the big blanket roll, and a bucket 
for a pannikin — lies to take cover, and when he 
rises to advance it is the effort of a camel with all 
his equipment hampering him. A hill is a ball under 
the Japanese gymnast's feet. To the Russian it 
is a creation of pitfalls and surprises. What will 
happen when we reach the plain ? 

Watching the side of the ridge occupied by the 
Russians we saw the Japanese slowly taking position 



158 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

under cover of the furrow at the edge of a field of 
ploughed ground. The flag was not with them. In 
the old days of shock tactics the troops of a unit 
guided on their colors. Modern armies may not 
have this any more than the beating of drums to 
inspirit them. To-day the flag is useful only to 
fling to the breeze as a signal of the occupation of 
an enemy's position — a signal to the general and 
to the gunners. At other times, unless you want to 
draw fire, it is best tied up in its oilcloth case. The 
color-bearer, who had shaken out his precious 
emblem a little below the crest of the hill when it 
had been taken, now rolled it up and started to follow 
the advance through the gully to the ridge beyond. 

Our little veterans in the trench over our heads 
had ceased firing. As we passed them in search of 
higher ground for our citadel of observation, they 
were sitting about as comfortably as they would on 
their mats at home, eating their rice, their dried fish, 
and their tinned meat out of their pannikins. Their 
wounded had been carried away. Their rifles, 
which lay on the parapet among the piles of empty 
cartridge cases, looked innocent of the mortal stings 
which each holds in its venom chamber. 

This trench is worth noting. Twice the Russians 
have had it and twice the Japanese have sent them 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 159 

back, neck and crop. At the edge of the temple 
grove, where the road takes the slope, it commands 
the long valley of Towan as the western steps of the 
Capitol command Pennsylvania Avenue. But the 
trench was of value only on the Japanese side. 
For the Russians it looked into the edge of the 
woods. On both occasions the Japanese had only 
a picket and an outpost beyond the old temple. 
The trench was built for use when the reserves 
should come up to the assistance of the outpost. 
This time, as before, the Japanese pursuit tumbled 
into its lap and swept with their fire the enemy's 
flight before them. Our little men seemed well 
pleased with their morning's work. They had a 
good appetite for their wholesome meal. 

Now, as I have written in my account of the ac- 
tion of July 4th, the Peking Road, after leaving the 
pass of Motien proper, winds over the shelving hills 
till it descends in front of the grove of the old temple 
to the valley of Towan, precisely the kind of valley 
which would be illustrated in a physical geography. 
It is a trough between hills. To the north of the 
trench — on the other side of the apron-like entrance 
to the valley — is a conical hill, which is a better place 
to see from than to fight from. Here we looked 
down upon the finish of the morning's fray; here, at 



i6o WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

noon, we saw the Russian saving what he could out 
of the wreck of the morning's hazard. 

On the road at our feet stood the abandoned 
limber. Beside it I now noticed a dead horse, which 
was explanatory. No living thing had yet ap- 
proached that spot where the drivers and gunners had 
cut their ammunition adrift in order to save their 
piece. Farther on was the carcass of another dead 
horse — perhaps from the same team. While the hills 
teemed with human ants, that road was a brown, 
dusty, abandoned streak. To appear on it was to 
be seen by thousands of riflemen. The beaten 
highway in a mountainous country had become 
the one place that everybody avoided. It was the 
street (with spectators on either side) swept clean 
before the procession came along — only the passing 
hero here would have been pelted with something 
harder than rose petals. 

On our right of the road, on the side of a high 
and gradual slope of ploughed ground, were two 
Russian companies in retreat. They moved in 
two groups — their intervals those of tired men who 
want air on a hot day. They might have been a 
leg-weary party of excursionists leisurely climbing a 
height to get a view of a town who were already 
fervently wishing that they were back at their hotel. 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS i6i 

They were not turning to fire; they were simply 
getting away — ^getting away in flocks, watched by 
their shepherds, the officers, in the days of long- 
range rifles and smokeless powder. They did not 
go fast in order to economize human life ; that would 
not have been brave. Also, that might have demoral- 
ized these grown-up children of the Czar, who would 
have kept on running each for himself. Their gray 
blanket rolls, their black breeches, made them as 
fair marks as black ducks on a pond. While the 
Russian support was on the crest of the ridge above 
the retreating groups, on the first crest this way 
were the Japanese. You recognized their position 
still by the twinkle in the sunlight of such officers' 
swords as had not yet been covered with khaki. 

An occasional Russian dropping showed that 
these two companies were under fire. Therefore, 
naturally the thing for them to do seemed to be to 
take advantage of a diagonal gully which cut the 
slope. This they did finally, still in a mass, still 
plodding nonchalantly on, still being brave — and 
stupid. An intelligent force under the same con- 
ditions would have scrambled up the hill in half the 
time as units, which would have instantly and auto- 
matically come together under the cover of the other 
side of the crest. But the Russian must be kept in 



1 62 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the flock. Elasticity he has not. He thinks for 
himself no more than the horses that draw the guns. 
Yes, the difference between Nippon Denji and Ivan 
Ivanovitch is more than that of height and weight; 
it spans the difference between the Middle Ages 
and common intelligence. 

The ridge which the Russians occupied was high, 
running out into the valley, with a precipitous 
descent like a promontory into a sound. On the 
other side the valley widened into a small plain, and 
here the road was occupied — with the procession of 
defeat. The habit of the Russian makes him take 
to the highway and to level places. Such is his 
plainsman's instinct that he will tramp under fire 
over even ground rather than advance under cover 
over the rough. When fire rakes the even ground, 
for a while he will march back — bravely and slowly 
back — rather than try the other way. 

On this little plain we saw the Russians doing 
the kind of thing which is impressive at the Russian 
grand manoeuvres. The ravine at the other side of 
the ridge was the natural funnel of retreat for all 
the scattered and beaten cohorts on the north (right) 
of the valley. Into this, galloping hospital wagons 
coming by the valley road from To wan disappeared. 
Out of it came in close order a battalion formed from 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 163 

the beaten ranks. Stretched across a cornfield on 
the left of the road, in the broad part of the valley, 
was a battery of guns, which had taken no advantage 
of the natural cover of the ground. The Russians 
seem to like a position where they can be seen and 
cannot see. 

The gunners were back under the shade of a grove 
of trees with their horses. A battalion of fresh re- 
serves, coming out of the grove, deployed into skirmish 
line and support for the guns with European drill- 
ground intervals. Back of them the valley is closed 
by the slopes rising to the heights of Yantsu Pass, 
which the failure of the morning made again the 
Russian line of defence. Beyond it there is, I am 
told, no other equally suitable ground for a stand 
until we reach Liaoyang. 

From the white pagoda tower on the first rise above 
the village of Towan, at the end of the valley, the 
Russian General saw the action of July 4th. The 
conduct of his troops was very brave, he reports. 
Two battalions advanced in close order and were 
repulsed and pursued by four companies. If the 
General is there now he may say that his retreat at 
this point is orderly and that his troops manoeuvred 
beautifully. He may even apply this to the company 
which now advances at the base of the promontory. 



i64 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

The idea, presumably, is to ''creep up'' and catch 
some of the Japanese infantry on the flank. They 
''creep up" in line on the river bed, which silhouettes 
their dark uniforms. For just such situations Japanese 
tactical sagacity is prepared. The man, the squad, 
the section, the company is each a thinking unit, yet 
connected by delicate, quickly responsive nerves with 
the whole. If a squad cannot cover this or that 
spur, a section joins it. If a section is not enough, a 
company comes. Some unit posted for the purpose 
grasped the opportunity now vouchsafed. By the 
tremor of that line you knew the moment the fire 
came. And the fire was too hot. The line closed 
up like a camera. Then individuals returned and 
picked up the wounded. 

Meanwhile, we had hoped to see that Russian 
battery in action. The hill where we sat was not 
more than four thousand yards away — a fair mark. 
Possibly this fact led to our General calling us back; 
j.nd when the General calls you have to go, even 
though the drama is at the denouement. As we 
drew away the guns were still without their gunners, 
and the retreat along the road continued. 

Having seen what we could of the finish of the 
fight, we now faced toward the ground where the 
struggle had taken place while we waited at head- 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 165 

quarters and while we rode to the front. To the 
east the new temple of Kwantei stood out boldly 
on the slope. This new home of the gods who 
were supposed to have prevented the Japanese from 
crossing the pass in the war of 1894-95 was this 
morning for a minute in the Russian firing line. 
Three shells were landed in its brick walls, but the 
big blue and white josses were not hit — which, ac- 
cording to Chinese logic, may justify a third sanctu- 
ary in their honor. 

The pass itself was hidden by other slopes, but 
our point of view lay directly in line with it and the 
Peking Road. Why the Russians should now strive 
in two assaults to recover Motien, which they aban- 
doned three weeks ago, is a strategic mystery which 
may possibly be explained by the fact that by the 
precepts of this war it was characteristically Russian. 
Kuropatkin's attempt was vital, and made under 
every augury of success that superstitious Russia 
could command. 

The 17th of July is the Sabbath, which blesses 
every undertaking to the mind of the Greek Church. 
It is also the anniversary of the taking of Shipka 
Pass, the event of the Russo-Turkish War which 
most appeals to the Slavonic imagination. Twenty- 
seven years later, the gallant success against one Ori- 



1 66 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ental race was to be repeated against another; the 
landmark of Russian courage in the Near East was 
to have its counterpart in the Far East. This Sab- 
bath was also a Saint's Day, bespeaking the power of 
the Church against the heathen of the little islands. 
Moreover, for the first time regular Russian troops 
from Europe proper were put in the field against 
Kuroki's fight-seasoned, march-seasoned veterans. 

It was a task to the taste of the hero of Shipka, 
and Kuropatkin first won place as Skobeleff's ad- 
jutant. In order to show his men what bad marks- 
men the Turks were, Skobeleff used to walk along 
the parapet of the Russian trenches before Plevna. 
He was the beau ideal of the days of shock tactics; 
he was the one for daylight surprises in mass and 
as swift marches as hero-worship and priestly incite- 
ment could bring out of the moujiks. He could live 
high on six days in the week and charge splendidly 
on the seventh. Kuropatkin has carried the tradi- 
tions of his old chief into the days of smokeless 
powder. Well may the Commander-in-Chief, him- 
self, wonder why, when he did as Skobeleff did, his 
legions, instead of placing the flag on the heights, 
were driven back in tumult and confusion. 

The famous pass, as I have said, is merely a cut 
worn by trafiic in the long range of hills at the sum- 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 167 

mit of the divide. These hills rather than Motien 
— a name — form the strategic position which Kuro- 
patkin tried to wrest from Kuroki. His plan was 
to engage the front at Motien while a lodgment 
was made on the flank at Gebatow, seven miles 
away. Behind Gebatow is another pass. The 
Russian advance was made in the darkness by two 
great columns; one by the Peking Road toward 
Motien, and the other by the road leading to Geba- 
tow. The total force consisted of seven regiments 
or in all about twenty-five thousand men. The 
Japanese were first apprised of the movement of the 
Gebatow column at about 12.30, of that of the other 
column two hours later. A single Japanese company 
received the shock of the Gebatow column. Here, 
indeed, occurred, first and last, the crux of the battle, 
which no foreign observer saw. That company held 
its ground. Before the reserves had come to its 
assistance it had twenty men killed and thirty-six 
wounded. 

Equally as well as he knows that his ammunition 
is good, a Japanese general knows that any force, 
however small, will stay where it is placed — stay, alive 
or dead. One company is as much like another as 
peas in a pod: No special units; no Rough Riders; 
no King's Own; no stiffening of weak regiments 



1 68 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

with regiments of volunteers or regulars. There 
is an approximate level of courage and skill. A com- 
mander may choose the unit at hand as a mechanic 
takes down any one of a number of equally tempered 
tools from a rack. If you want a Horatius at the 
Bridge, take the nearest first sergeant. 

The Russians came to the attack with a splendid 
confidence — a childish, mob-like confidence. All 
the way across the Siberian steppes in their troop 
trains they had been begetting this. ''When they 
see us big burly fellows, the leather-skinned Makaki 
(dwarfs) will run fast enough. They will find that 
we are no colonists and reserves — we are the Little 
Father's chosen." But the ''Makaki" know a 
mark when they see one; and they like to fire at a 
column in close order. 

Nature as well as church and historical auguries 
were on the side of the Russians this morning; the 
Japanese had only skill and courage on theirs. Dawn 
broke into a thick fog. At six o'clock you could 
not see a man two hundred yards away. Pushing 
aside all outposts, the Russians gained the slope fac- 
ing the ridges of the pass itself, and there in the mist 
they began intrenching themselves — to hold the front 
engaged according to plan. They did not seem to 
know that the Japanese had guns on the pass — in- 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 169 

formation they had from authoritative sources as soon 
as the gunners could see them. It is demorahzing 
to be under shell-fire when no big voices speak on 
your side — that is an old, old military saying which 
has lost none of its sapiency with the improved dead- 
liness and precision of artillery. 

Besides those in front, on the Russian right came 
the sound of more guns. The Japanese division on 
that side had sent out a demonstration on the flank. 
The gunners could see little, but the thunders they 
invoked were a mighty warning. On the Russian 
left at Gebatow that Japanese regiment had gripped 
its hill with a steady outpour of lead, and Russian 
numbers could not stir them. Thus the centre alone 
was in its place, numbed with the fear that it was 
flanked. The position desired by the Russians had 
been reversed at the outset; the Japanese centre was 
containing the Russian centre, while the Russian 
flanks were pressed back. The rapier of his strategy 
had bent back on the fencer. Church and anni- 
versary and cover of night and mist would not avail 
him when his steel was poor. 

As the mist cleared the Japanese gunners saw in 
the valleys, into which the two roads had poured their 
reserves, black masses for their target. Destruction 
was as simple as bursting a bomb in a room full of 



170 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

men. Shrapnel rained until the very road was 
clogged with the dead and wounded. No Russian 
guns spoke in reassuring tones above the confusion. 
If the Russian artillery came up at the gallop more 
frequently there would be less need of the hospital 
wagons coming up at the gallop. 

An attack with seven divisions without support 
from batteries! What can this indicate, unless 
Japanese formidability has driven the Russians to 
timidity in risking their guns, lest they should lose 
them as they did at Hamatan? This slaughter- 
pen, where no blow could be returned, was a terrible 
introduction of the flower of Kuropatkin's army to 
''The Real Makaki," as you would write the title 
for a magazine article. Without guns to support 
them, flanked by more than the demonstration from 
the other division — by the force of the brigade hold- 
ing the pass (a brigade never for a moment in doubt 
of its abilities) that had crawled over the high ascents 
to the south, which evidently had not appealed to the 
Russians as a quantity in the game — the Russian 
line that had intrenched in the front fell back upon 
a scene of carnage in place of a reserve. 

From that moment the attack became a chase. 
The Japanese force pursued twice its numbers over 
the ridges. Reaching a summit, Nippon Denji 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 171 

hugged it closely, pouring in a steady fire upon the 
fleeing figures under the sight of his rifle barrel. 
When the Russians answered it was always in volleys, 
usually spiteful and ragged. To fire at will (which 
is the only killing way, except when demoralization 
of a column caught within the range is sought) 
seems to be without the pale of the Russian private's 
sense of individuality and intelligence. He must 
fire as he marches — in a flock. (No doubt, in grand 
manoeuvres his volleys are quite ''beautiful," as the 
admiring princes might say.) He aims in the 
general direction of the enemy, with the result that 
he fires into the sky. When a line of Russian rifle- 
men on one ridge are protecting the retreat of their 
brethren below from a line of Japanese riflemen on 
the next ridge, they disturb the Japanese compara- 
tively littie. And when all the pursued are either 
hit or under cover on the other side of the Russian 
ridge, the Japanese begin to advance according to 
their own system of tactics. Rake the ridges and 
then charge them is the way — the way that 15,000 
men sent 25,000 back to To wan. 

Following the road back, after leaving the conical 
hill, I saw a dead Russian lying by the same bush 
where I had seen one on the 4th. He was of the 
same regiment as the other, and the coincidence was 



172 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

startling. (From the valley where the slaughter of 
the reserves from the shell-fire had occurred we were 
warned away by our chaperon of the staff. Our 
course lay over that taken by the Russian advance 
line which faced the pass.) Prisoners were still 
being picked up in the underbrush. One Russian 
who had been found prostrate had been examined 
in vain for any wound. Yet it was with difficulty 
that he was got to walking. Apparently he had been 
'' scared stiff " by his baptism of fire. When another 
unwounded man was asked how he happened to be 
taken prisoner, he replied: "I wanted to be." When 
a contemptuous comment was translated to him, he 
said: ^'I have no interest in this war. I don't pro- 
pose to be sacrificed." He may have read Tolstoi. 

The Russians had come up in heavy marching 
order just as they did on the 4th. The field was 
scattered with pieces of equipment. To a private 
who lightened his load the discarded blanket or 
intrenching tool might mean the difference between 
supping in the Russian lines or going to Tokio as a 
prisoner. In one knapsack was a Jewish text. I 
wondered if the owner of the text, thinking of 
Kishineff, took any particular interest in Russian 
success in Manchuria. Among the pile of spoil at 
brigade headquarters, now so familiar a sight with 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 173 

this army, were three drums. Jewish texts and 
drums ! A polyglot army of enforced loyalty against 
a homogeneous people with a common breath of 
patriotism! Drums in the advance line of a morn- 
ing attack, at a period when next to the art of not 
being seen is that of not being heard! 

In the temple were some of the Russians who 
had been wounded by shell-fire. Their groans min- 
gled in a low, agonizing chorus. Among them were 
men too stunned to know that death was near; 
men who were smiling to think that their wounds 
were light and they might smoke cigarettes and live. 
A giant, blue-eyed, blond-haired fellow, while he 
groaned, tugged at the coat- sleeve of a neighbor, who 
looked at him in the puzzled scowl of poor brute 
humanity not yet ushered out of the Middle Ages. 
The neighbor, indeed, had a face of such hard un- 
intelligence as to make comprehensible the outrages 
proved in this day's fighting against the soldiers of 
that Czar who was the author of The Hague Peace 
ConferencCo Hitherto, we have heard of Russian 
outrages; some of them unnamable here. I had been 
slow to repeat these reports. Mutilation of the 
bodies of a brave adversary by soldiers of a supposed 
civilized nation seems incredible. 

Among those who were sent to observe the Russian 



174 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

advance were Lieutenant Seinai Yanagisawa and 
five soldiers of the Thirtieth Regiment. They made 
contact with the Russians in the woods by the old 
temple. Two of the soldiers, Fukusho Yaesawa 
and Tokichi Nakasawa, were killed. The Russian 
line passed over the place where they fell. After- 
ward the Japanese recovered this ground. When 
the bodies of Fukusho and Tokichi were found, 
their heads — and all that follows represents surgical 
investigation and affidavits — had been laid open by 
an axe or an intrenching tool, with the brain matter 
falling out. Tokichi had been shot through the 
aorta and died instantly. Fukusho had been shot 
through the heart and died instantly. Both these 
bullet wounds had bled freely. There was no blood 
from the brain matter, plainly indicating that the 
blows on the head had been struck after death. In 
other words, wanton, butcher-like brutality had 
wreaked its vengeance on the bodies. 

m^ *Aa mlm %|« mS^ «A# 

*T» *J* *T* ^^ ^* ^* 

The General in charge of the Japanese division 
which had done this splendid morning's work — 
Nishi, who listens and listens and gives few worded 
orders — ^upon our return to the new temple, we found 
seated on a grassy slope smoking a cigarette. He 
had not even got up a perspiration on this hot day. 



SECOND ATTACK ON MOTIEN PASS 175 

His strenuosity is delegated, and that is his art of 
command. Some infantry reserves near by were 
fanning themselves. To a Russian who had not 
tasted their fire these "Makaki" might have seemed 
quite effeminate. The fans which the little men use 
are presents from the Emperor. On them is in- 
scribed, in the handwriting of the Commander-in- 
Chief of the Army, Marquis Oyama, the words: 
"Do your best for your country!" On a hot day 
a fan may beat up a breeze in front of a soldier's 
nose which will save him from succumbing. 

Could the Russian General have seen the smiling 
Nishi, that undemonstrative head and front of 
efficiency (whose work on this day was to make 
him the first division commander in the war to be 
congratulated by the Emperor), it would have been 
the last blow. Well might the Russian complain: 

*^0h! If he did not make such easy work of it!" 



XV 

A RIGHT WING IN THE AIR 

We were six weeks at Feng-wang-cheng. We 
have been in Lienshankwan four weeks and we came 
here expecting to go to Liaoyang at once. In 
neither instance was our stop due to a check by the 
enemy. We have been more than punctual, and 
thus we have been an ideal swinging and isolated 
right wing of the closing movement on Liaoyang, 
which is now developing itself. For the Second 
Army to have to wait on us would be a misfortune. 
The First Army's place is to wait on the Fourth, 
which is between the two, and to go when it calls. 
We are now within three days' march of the railroad. 
With our next movement, either Kuropatkin will have 
evacuated Liaoyang or else we shall have played 
a part in the decisive battle of the campaign. 

The advance of the First Army has been in three 

periods. In the first, Korea was cleared of the 

enemy and the Yalu was crossed and the war carried 

into Manchuria. If ever the Russians were kept 

guessing it was at this time. Kuroki's movement 

176 



A RIGHT WING IN THE AIR 1 77 

up the Peking Road drew off attention from the 
landing of the Second and Third Armies. For the 
Russian, on one hand, was the possibihty of feints 
and withdrawals on the Liaotung; on the other, the 
possibility of the First Army being reinforced and 
driving through to Liaoyang — that master blow of 
strategic fearlessness which will ever be one of the 
fascinating ''ifs" in the history of this war. We did 
the cautious, the safe, the academic thing, as the 
Japanese have done from first to last. Meanwhile, 
they have had enormous success in convincing the 
world of their capacity for the unusual and the un- 
expected. 

What the First Army did was to stop at the first 
good defensive position where it could have a fair- 
sized town for quarters. Feng-wang-cheng, then, 
was the second period. Here, if Kuropatkin should 
attempt to dispose of it in detail, it was perfectly 
safe from an attack by double its numbers. Indeed, 
I think that an attack would have been most wel- 
come. Originally, we had expected the Russians to 
defend Feng-wang-cheng. Their rout at the Yalu 
gave them no time to take advantage of a fine nat- 
ural position. 

As we waited at Feng-wang-cheng, every passing 
day seemed to superficial observation a day of ad- 



178 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

vantage to the Russians; a day for increasing their 
force and for strengthening those defensive works 
which should delay our advance when finally it 
should begin. Time was what Russia needed; time 
we were giving her, ran the argument. The fault 
of this reasoning was that it overlooked the fact that 
Russia had other places to defend. The pressure on 
the right was replaced by pressure on the Liaotung 
Peninsula, at the point of which lay a fortress whose 
loss would be irreparable. 

Kuropatkin was marching to the relief of Port 
Arthur rather than to the attack of Feng-wang-cheng. 
He went, we now believe, with all the available force 
that he could spare from the protection of his line 
of communications ; of Haicheng and Liaoyang from 
the possible landing of the Fourth Army at New- 
chwang, perhaps, and the simultaneous advance of 
ours. Thus the railroad was held in the vise of two 
possibilities. Equally with the cry of the Japanese, 
^^We must have Port Arthur!" runs the cry of the 
Russian, '^The enemy must not get between Mukden 
and Liaoyang! " 

The effort to relieve Port Arthur was met by the 
Japanese in the battle of Tehlitz. Here the Rus- 
sians chose their own ground. They were attacked 
by equal numbers of Japanese, who drove them in 



A RIGHT WING IN THE AIR 179 

rout from the field, and buried over eighteen hundred 
of their dead — or more than the total of Japanese 
casualties. Our own advance did not follow im- 
mediately. It was so timed in the general programme 
of strategy as to make all the Russian defensive works 
waste effort. 

Yesterday I rode back to Bunsuirei, which was 
to have been the first strong line of defence before 
the pass of Motien itself. An arm of hills, which 
here cuts the valley, slopes upward to a bald 
knob, where, through the weeks that we were at 
Feng-wang-cheng, a Russian lookout was kept. Ap- 
proaching this position from the direction of Feng- 
wang-cheng, you see nothing but the green, unin- 
habited hills. This is as the Russian wished the 
Japanese to see them. Approaching from Lien- 
shankwan, you behold heights that are scarred with 
lines of fresh-turned earth. From the main road 
an artillery road branches. It runs straight up the 
gentler ascents, and then, stone abutted, it zigzags 
back and forth to its end and object — gun positions, 
ammunition chambers, and casemates. 

As you make an incision in a Dutch cheese, so 
the crests of the round hilltops have been cut into 
redoubts. With the same care that a cook takes in 
crimping a pie-crust, every tell-tale sign has been 



l8o WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

hidden; every break of earth has been sodded on 
the Feng-wang-cheng side. The same amount 
of energy expended on the old Peking Road would 
have macadamized that atrocious highway for many 
miles. The Chinese must have been vastly amused. 

Our philosopher of the pigtail and the baggy 
trousers had been accustomed to the idle Russian. 
The busy Russian was a new order of being. After 
the idle Russian had broken from his comfortable 
habit, then to make no use of the result — that was 
^ losing face" with the Chinese, quite. The old 
master ceased to be formidable. When the natives 
catch individual Russians or Russians by twos and 
threes in the open now, they beat them with flails 
and slash them with sickles and otherwise take a pri- 
vate revenge for the outrages their women folk have 
suffered. 

Here, as at Ku-lien-cheng on the Yalu, there is 
topographical testimony of a comimander-in-chief's 
change of mind — only in a wholly different way. 
On the Yalu he was prepared for a crossing at An- 
tung instead of above Wiju. At the last moment 
it was apparently decided to make a determined 
stand, with the result that the Russians fell between 
that stool and the one of a rearguard action. The 
Siberian troops who faced the assault lay exposed 



A RIGHT WING IN THE AIR i8i 

in the shallowest improvised cover on the crest of a 
rocky ridge, with a score of guns playing on them. 

At Bunsuirei the preparations were not without 
a host; for one Japanese column marched peace- 
fully by these works and looked over its shoulder at 
the seamed and scarred hillside. Here there were 
no shallow cuts where shrapnel could easily find its 
mark but trenches deeper than a man's height where 
the defenders might stand. The gun positions had 
been laid out with a skilful hand. How often m the 
weeks of waiting the artillery officers and the artillery- 
men scanning the slopes must have imagmed the 
advancing Japanese under their shells, and m their 
fancy even pictured that joy of a gunner's heart, a 
column in close order within range. Any one who 
views the position can think only of a death struggle; 
the redoubts suggest this. They provided that from 
their rear the infantry might protect the guns « 
extremis. If fall back the defending force must, it 
would be only after having cost the enemy a price m 
casualties and in delay. 

In this region cultivation has crept farther up the 
valley than in the neighborhood of Antung, nearer 
the market, where good land is neglected; for the 
Chinese farmer migrates little in search of better 
conditions. From the signal hill itself twenty miles 



l82 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

of valley, with the fields on distant slopes no bigger 
than your hand, is outlined before the eye. The 
winding road and gravelly river-bed are strung with 
villages, which, with the going heavy from the rains 
that pour when the sun does not pour, are the mile- 
stones of the progress of a soldiery in heavy march- 
ing order and an army's transportation. 

To the west the heights of the range which the 
old highway crosses at Motien Pass are dim in blue 
haze. That was the great second line — the main 
line — of defence. Here were miles of trenches and 
more gun positions that were never used. These, 
too, were built in Kuropatkin's time. The blame 
for this fiasco cannot be laid at the door of any old 
general who had been vegetating in Siberia — but pos- 
sibly at the door of one who had been vegetating in 
St. Petersburg. He would not spend a life to keep 
a position which has cost him two thousand casualties 
in a vain effort to regain. 

Why? Another change of mind, perhaps; the 
pressure of other columns, perhaps; misinformation 
as to our numbers, perhaps. The Russian still in- 
sists on taking up a certain position and waiting for 
us to attack him in front, never thinking that we 
may send a force to take him in flank. We came 
from Feng-wang-cheng by three parallel roads, any 



A RIGHT WING IN THE AIR 183 

one of which flanked any position in front of another. 
In the fight of the Twelfth Division at Chowtow — 
when this army brought its right into line with its 
centre and left — the Russians had equal or superior 
numbers, but a Japanese detachment, creeping over 
hills which the Russians considered (evidently) quite 
impossible for military purposes, caught the Russian 
line that had held the Japanese back steadily all day 
at an angle which compelled hasty retreat under a 
killing fire. 

The Russians suffer as much for want of infor- 
mation as the Japanese profit by completeness of 
information. Even if the Russians had not a single 
loyal native spy — and I sometimes doubt if they have 
— in their pay, and had to depend solely upon scouts, 
their ignorance seems inexplicable. Any Chinese 
who has been in the Russian lines is at the service 
of the Japanese. Japanese success has given him 
the confidence of his sympathies. The farther we 
go into the country, the more experience the natives 
have had with the Russians, and the more pro- Jap- 
anese they are. The point of their hatred is sharp 
with the outrages that their women folk have suffered. 
Fine professions of commanding officers — a kind of 
death-bed repentance — do not work out in detail 
with the Russians, while they do with the Japanese. 



1 84 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

If the Russian employs native spies on his own 
account, he does not know but they are also in 
the pay of the enemy; he does not know but the in- 
formation is that which the Japanese want him to 
to have. It is too late now for the Russians to make 
friends with the Chinese; the first seeds were sown 
in the brutalities of the Boxer rebellion — I have seen 
them brain children in cold blood — and now they 
reap the harvest not only of these, but of years of 
occupation which have been years of fear for every 
peasant woman in Manchuria. 

And here again we find the Russian uncertain of 
his own mind in his policy as he has been in strategy. 
His natural method is that of careless autocracy. 
Between this and an attempt to placate the natives 
he falls. Some towns he has burned, others he has 
not. Sometimes he thinks of villages as future quar- 
ters for troops, and again he would leave a path of 
devastation in the way of the enemy. But devasta- 
tion means that he would cut from under him the 
last vestige of the sympathy of real civilization. 

Even without every Chinese as an ally, estimating 
the numbers and positions of the Russians would 
not be difficult. They bring their bands and drums, 
they camp in masses, they march by exposed roads, 
and the smoke of their camp-fires in open places 



A RIGHT WING IN THE AIR 185 

ascends to heaven. Climb a hill and look into the 
valley and you can pretty well guess how many of 
them there are. But this army which covers the ap- 
proaches to this range for many miles! — its size is 
masked even to the eyes of the attached correspond- 
ents. It is a force of seemingly scattered units which, 
at the word, fly together into forces of surprising size. 
A Russian officer, depending alone upon his eyes, 
might ride all day by the roads and paths, and when 
night came be uncertain whether he had passed 
through a district occupied by a battalion or a di- 
vision. 

Detachments share the farm-houses with their 
owners, going as quietly about their work as if they 
were old inhabitants. Like the little men whom old 
Rip met in the Catskills, they nestle in the fastnesses 
of nooks and shady places without ever doing such a 
noisy thing as bowl — never! If half our force moved 
away overnight and you rode through the valley 
again the next day, you would notice no difference. 



XVI 

BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 

At three on the morning of July 31st all baggage 
and even all correspondents and attaches forsook 
the little town of Lienshankwan, whose hospitality 
the Japanese had held with martial courtesy for 
more than a month, leaving fewer flies behind than 
they found when the Russians evacuated it. On 
the 4th and the 17th, when our positions were at- 
tacked, the unexpected sound of firing had taken us 
over the pass. This time the engagement came 
as no surprise; since the orders of the afternoon it 
had become a set event like target practice. 

All the ominous elation of a night before battle 
was ours. Wakening from the few hours' sleep that 
a correspondent snatched had the thrill of antici- 
pation replete with every possibility of the shock of 
arms. We had time for contemplation of the fact 
that we were assigned to an army corps which, after 
all, was only a unit in enveloping forces stretching 
for nearly a hundred miles. 

From the summit of Motien we saw the first glow of 

186 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 187 

light in the East. A thick mist had preceded it; a 
mist that might save infantry approaching a position 
hundreds of Kves and hold gunners in the awful 
leash of blindness at the hour toward which all their 
anticipations and preparations had been directed. 
But the mist went as quickly as it had come, rising 
swiftly as if to salute the dawn of a summer's day, 
when mountain-top was as clear against the sky-line 
as the houses of a village against the foliage of a slope. 
Pack-laden and rifle-laden offence with the sun on 
its back— as the Imperial Guards realized bitterly 
before the day was over— was to have no cover 
except of earth and trees and growing crops from 
their watchful and waiting antagonists. 

On the ride over we passed no guns or hastening 
infantry. The whole fighting army was on the 
other side of the pass. General Kuroki was already 
on the hill back of the new temple (which with the 
surrounding country I have already described) . That 
thatch of tree branches which an infantry outpost 
had erected now sheltered the mind of the movement, 
who kept cool literally as well as metaphorically. 
What chess-player would not ? On this hill, his chief 
of staff at his side, he was to remain all day. The 
chief of staff did the talking; he listened, and now 
and then he gave an order. 



1 88 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

On this occasion all the carefully laid programme 
was not carried out. The central column of the 
Guards was checked ; batteries had to change their 
positions. In the face of good and bad news he 
was the same unchanging Kuroki. No spectator's 
curiosity held his attention to any one part of the 
field. He was playing the greatest of all games with 
his mind on team play. The sound that interested 
him most was not that of firing, but the click of the 
telegraph instrument, which left nothing to the doubt 
of vision but told him exactly what each unit was 
doing. Meanwhile, the spectator, watching through 
high-powered glasses for flashes and smoke rings, 
saw the masses, the supers, the torch- bearers and 
heard a roar and compassed their meaning as you 
get the outline of the plot of a play in a tongue for- 
eign to you. 

From the left with the first streaks of light, between 
the speeches of the guns, came the drum-drum of 
infantry fire — but first to the simple outline of the 
day's problem! We held the higher of the two 
ranges of the divide, and the lower, the second, was 
our object. The taking of Yushu (Yushurei) Pass 
which commands the Mukden Road was left to the 
division on our right, the Twelfth, which operated 
beyond our sight and almost beyond our hearing. 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 189 

Yantsu (Yoshurei) Pass, which commands the Liao- 
yang Road, was the work of the central (Second) 
and the left (Guards) division. The right and the 
central division were to advance in line, and the left 
division was to strike Yantsu on the flank and the 
rear. 

The spectator had the old citadel of observation 
which he occupied on the 17th — valueless for guns 
and infantry, and highly useful for attaches and cor- 
respondents, who could see the action as a whole. 
This conical hill was one of the heights which form 
the reach between the two ranges where there are 
sugar-loaves, turtle-backs and camel-humps, with 
ridges twisting in unexpected directions — a terrain 
like that of a loose cloth wrinkled with the hands till 
there was no set characteristic except that of irregu- 
larity. 

At our feet lay the valley where some glacier once 
made a track for freshets to wear down, and at its 
end gleamed the tantalizing white base of the pagoda 
tower of To wan. For a month that landmark of 
our desire had tempted our eyes; and to-day we 
were to have it or know the reason why. Towan 
lies at the junction of valleys, as well as at the gap 
that the old Peking Road follows in its final passage 
after its long route in the shadow of mountain^ 



igo WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

toward the plain. By the roads in the low places 
dwell the communes who plaster the slopes with the 
green squares of their tillage. 

Now the force which follows a valley becomes 
a target for surprises and plunging fire. Except 
under the cover of darkness, the attacking force 
could not use the Towan valley as a channel for 
bringing up its reserves. The Tiensuiten valley, 
running north and south and crossing that of Towan 
in front of the tower, stood between Kuroki and 
the enemy as the Yalu had at Ku-lien-cheng. The 
Russian defences, with guns in front and guns on 
the sides, a vast rise of mountainous heights, was 
as threatening as the bow view of a battle-ship, 
the white base of the pagoda being the bone in its 
teeth. On the right the angle was sharp in view of 
the gentler slopes which led up to the eminences 
almost on a line with the Peking Road, which 
was the centre of the Russian position. Obviously 
the way to take this was with pressure of infantry 
on both sides if evacuation alone was desired; on 
one side if a ^'bag" was desired. The second 
way was tried, then the first was called into assistance, 
and the manner of this as I observed it makes my 
story. 

Morning found the batteries of our central di- 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 191 

vision in position and their troops lining the ridges. 
It was not yet their turn. If the division on the left 
was hidden from us as a body, we could at least see 
some of its chips fly. The crack of its guns and the 
bursting of its shells we heard as cries and their 
echoes. We located the first Russian battery to 
attract our attention by the burst of shrapnel smoke 
which it drew. Here in a " saddle " between two 
crests the gun positions had been cut out of limestone 
rock three or four hundred feet above the level of the 
plain. As the ugly blue curls of smoke shot out and 
vanished into thin vapor, others came to take their 
place and underneath them flashed the answers like 
the mirrors of a heliograph in a burning sun. 

The blue bursts were three to one against the 
flashes, which came slower and slower and then 
stopped. But still the thunders kept up. We had 
seen only one Russian battery. Scanning the heights 
for a glimpse of the others, on the very sky-line one 
caught one, two, three, four malicious, hellish points 
of flame. They were as sudden as the flight of a 
rocket on a dark night in a little-traversed sea. 
Splendid was their message to any observing gunner, 
to whom they bespoke the apotheosis of his art. 
In a breath they told of arduous weeks of preparation 
for our coming. 



192 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

There was a miracle of the spade, the effort that 
had carried an artillery road in old, old China to 
that altitude! In the lap between two cones and on 
the crest of one of them, snug as eaglets in their 
nests, these metal mouths were vomiting death to 
objects six or seven thousand yards away. No 
shrapnel bursts went that high. Here were gunners 
coolly at target practice while their comrades in the 
"saddle" below took the revenge the enemy returned. 
Japanese skill in gunnery could not overcome the 
altitude or the obstacles which armories turn out 
and money can buy. 

I had waited for months for some concrete illustra- 
tion of the superiority of the Russian guns. Now 
it was emphasized as plainly as the speed of a 
forty-horse-power automobile and a light runabout. 
(The authors of profound exclamations about the 
amazing feats of the Japanese artillery which have 
been going the round of the press for months have 
confounded guns with gunnery.) To-day, for the 
first time in the five months' campaign of this army, 
the fact that Ivan Ivanovitch is a big, burly man 
and Nippon Denji is a little man notably counted 
in the Russian's favor. 

If Ivan has big boots, big stretchers, big blankets, 
big commissary and hospital wagons, and big horses, 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 193 

he also has big guns. With the Japanese, artillery has 
been sacrificed to the size of the horses. His gun 
is small like everything else about his army. It 
is of an old pattern; the range is a thousand yards 
less than the enemy's; the shell three pounds lighter; 
the muzzle velocity 300 feet less a second; and it 
can fire only one shot where the Russian gun fires 
two or three. Nippon Denji had led the world 
to a false conclusion by the way in which he used 
a poor weapon. But on the 31st he was not against 
such clumsy adversaries as those who made their 
guns the sport of disaster at the Yalu. Instead, 
he was against European trained men of that arm 
of the service which calls the best of the thin upper- 
crust of Russian intelligence for officers. 

As a hydrant commands a street crossing, so the 
skyline battery commanded the mouth of the valley 
from which the central column of the Guards division, 
debouched at dawn. In confidence the gunners, 
who had plotted every distance within range, waited 
for their target to appear. One of the Japanese 
batteries took up a position on a ridge. From the 
bottom of the valley it was as obscured as a man in 
the middle of a flat roof from the street; from the 
Russian hill-tops it was as plain as the man on the 
flat roof from an adjoining church steeple. When 



194 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

that Japanese battery fired, the skyline battery 
turned on the switchboard of destruction. 

One, two, three, four went the screaming answers 
back over the fields of millet and corn, the groves 
and gullies, to their mark. With the first discharge 
they were shooting as accurately as the even quality 
of fuses and powder — the exactitude of chemical 
processes and angles — would permit without harm 
to themselves. They could keep up the stream as 
long as they had ammunition. The Japanese 
battery was a battery with its hands tied against a 
giant with free and militant fists. The skyline 
battery proved the overwhelming power of artillery 
when there is no adversary to take the venom out 
of its sting. 

For our guns there was only one thing to do. 
Japanese courage does not bootlessly stick its head 
into the cannon's mouth; it is a quantity most skil- 
fully used. So our guns ceased firing till they should 
have a better position and a clearer field. The 
skyline battery not only silenced them but it was the 
main compelling force, I judge, in making the news 
that rumor brought us at the conical hill. The fire 
of the left had died down at 9:30; and then we 
heard that the central column of the Guards had 
been checked. The " bag " seemed in danger. It 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 195 

was the turn of our Second Division to carry out its 
part. (Still all that we had seen to give proof to 
report was the unanswered flashes of the unap- 
proachable skyline battery; the wall of the To wan 
valley hid all else from us.) 

While the left fought, we had watched the positions 
of our own reserves on the nearest ridge and scanned 
the Russian heights in vain for a glimpse of a single 
infantryman. On the Tiensuiten valley ridge was 
one of the Second Division batteries. This was ap- 
proached by a gully leading from the valley of 
To wan. The slatey color of ammunition wagons 
choked this gully at a point just beneath the crest. 
Officers and gunners had been loitering about at 
picnic ease. At ten — the most cheerful moment 
of the day for them — the Russian batteries began 
searching the valley of Tiensuiten and the Japanese 
ridge overlooking it. We saw the gunners taking 
their places in the Japanese battery. A minute 
later they let go. They had a few rounds of almost 
uninterrupted service while the enemy located their 
guns. 

Then a battery high up on the Russian right took 
a hand. The figures which still loitered back of 
the Japanese battery did not seem much discom- 
posed. They were at least taking their time to 



196 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

reach cover. But suddenly blue puff-balls were 
blown out in every direction. From our safe posi- 
tion they were pretty to look at; their significance 
assaulted our ears when we heard the shrill flight 
of their projectiles. The figures disappeared as 
quickly as a colony of prairie-dogs which had been 
sunning themselves. Men and horses having sep- 
arated for a breath of fresh air now hugged cover 
as if it were an infant in arms — all because of the 
little blue rings of smoke, which would have been 
a strange and unaccountable bit of witchcraft to one 
of Caesar's legions. 

Into the guns, over the guns, this side of the guns, 
in nice spraying distance beyond the guns pointing 
above the bull's-eye like the hits of a good marksman 
on a paper target, with bursts above and spouts of 
earth beneath, the fifteen-pound monsters with their 
quarts of spreading bullets came. 

''A little over! A litde short! A little wide!" ran 
the comments of the spectators, all intent on the 
game and not thinking of life and death. (But 
it was life and death, however, that lent the game its 
spirit.) We saw units dodging up and down to fire, 
and that was all. But to fire was to draw more 
fire — fire that we could not adequately return. The 
thing was to move up and get a better hold on these 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 197 

long-range, rapid-firing adversaries. Our battery 
became silent. Receiving no reply, the Russians 
stopped. 

This round, so far as the guns went, had been 
decided in the Russians' favor, I think. There 
was a lull through both valleys. The army rested; 
it ate ; it made new dispositions. An artillery 
duel consists of intervals of ear-wracking noise and 
of silence which is like that of a tomb compared to 
the rasping, mechanical purr of a factory room full 
of looms. The fusillade begins with first one and 
then another taking up the refrain, and then from 
the whirlwind height of action it dies down one by 
one till a last boom and shriek and crack introduces 
a recess. And by the way it dies down you may 
well judge which side is getting the better of the play. 
The rests in a combat of mechanical and chemical 
powers of destruction are as natural as the breathing 
spaces in brute conflict which take on the rude 
dignity of rounds in a prize-fight. 

The lull on this occasion had an exception. One 
gun of the ridge battery kept on firing in an assertive 
solo at regular intervals to make the Russians think 
all the guns were there, when, in fact, the others 
were moving away. We saw the General and his 
staff go riding up the gully to the battery position, 



198 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

and finally he and a part of the guns disappeared 
over the ridge into the valley where now our other 
batteries and the entire right wing of our division's 
advance was hidden. There he directed the ad- 
vance to the final grip of the gentler slopes on the 
right of the Russian position. 

You might have then thought that the work was 
over for the day. Noonday shadows crept lazily 
over the valley of Towan. The Russian heights 
seemed as innocent of guns as the hills of a resort 
viewed from the veranda of a summer hotel. On 
every hand was the silence of an uninhabited land. 
It was a silence more intense than any day of peace 
this stretch of the earth's surface had ever known. 
In ordinary times some native carts would have been 
creaking along the valley roads and the population, 
unhushed, would have been going about their usual 
labors. It was a creepy silence though the blazing 
sun illuminated all things; a silence charged with 
the thought that stealthy antagonist was creeping 
toward waiting antagonist. You could hear the 
tick of your watch and the drowsy hum of insects 
quite plainly as you sought a little shade and rest 
under a tree back of the conical hill. 

At 2 : 30 our guns broke out with fresh energy. 
Those of the ridge battery having moved nearer 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 199 

could now pay back their old assailant in coin of kind. 
One of its pieces spoke harshly, like an orator who 
had over-used his throat. Some imperfection in the 
bore, lately developed, must have cut the shell case 
a litde and the revolution in transit produced a 
guttural that was out of tune with all the other shrieks. 
Thirty- two pieces the Russians had in all; fifty- 
four the Japanese had in all. Every one joined in 
the swelling chorus. Smoke rings hung on the hill- 
sides like thistle-blows caught by an upward zephyr. 
There was now no bad shooting except from — from 
none other than the unapproachable skyline battery, 
which swung its muzzles around to play on the right. 
One, two, three, four — its shells burst four or five hun- 
dred feet above the line of the ridge and over the 
valley of Tiensuiten which the ridge hid from our 
eyes. Directly we learned its object and the cause of 
the outburst of all the guns on both sides to their full 
capacity. Through the corn and millet of the slopes 
approaching the Russian position on the right we 
caught the movement of the Japanese infantry. 
Draw a line north and south through the tower of 
Towan and at right angles to the road leading through 
the pass, and this force was beyond the Russian gun 
position on the other side of the tower and the in- 
fantry supporting it. 



200 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

The irregular terrain which had profited the sky- 
line battery now made it the sport of its own satire. 
Its target was invisible to its gunners. It was fir- 
ing by estimate from a position where the signals of 
results could not be easily received. The rapidity 
of the bursts still told that same tale of the slowness 
of the antedated Japanese guns. But the faster 
the fire the better for the morale of the Japanese. 
If the bullets had struck the advancing infantry from 
such a height they could not have done more than 
felled them. As it was, they were hundreds of yards 
to the rear of both skirmish line and support. The 
Japanese infantry, tired and hot — the Japanese gun- 
ners especially — in view of what they had suffered 
from these same guns, might well grin over a dis- 
play of killing power as futile as tossing twelve-inch 
shells into an untraversed part of the Pacific Ocean. 
By silencing some of the aggressors it might have 
diminished the stream of destruction that was flow- 
ing into other Russian gun -pits; but the officers 
in the skyline battery evidently decided that they 
could better serve their country by indirect fire upon 
unseen infantry. Meanwhile, the Russian ''saddle" 
battery was receiving more than it could return. 
The flashes from its muzzles were becoming infre- 
quent. One imagined that each shot might be its 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 20i 

death gasp. Seeing their man down, the Japanese 
increased their fire. Ten shrapnel to one that was 
sent were burst over the position. 

With the dust from a ground explosion still hang- 
ing in the air I saw three curls of blue smoke, each 
fairly over one of the three guns, breaking in as quick 
succession as you would flip out three fingers of 
your hand from your palm. Such a bull's-eye score 
must have been accident. Neither human, chemi- 
cal, nor mechanical accuracy would permit it. The 
^^ saddle" battery was the first to go out of action 
before a long lull in which antagonists again took 
account of stock. The skyline battery which made 
the morning artillery session in the Russians' favor, 
had now by its hopeless waste of power left honors 
even. 

When the loud mouths spoke again, the infantry 
of the Second Division, with the cool of the evening 
at hand, were ready for the final act. Every Japanese 
gun was in action. Now and then, in a second when 
there were no reports from muzzles, no sound of the 
shrill cries of shells in flight or the "uk-kung" of 
bursts, we heard, as you. hear the rumble of city trafiic 
in the lull of conversation, the rattle of the rifles, with 
possibly the rake of a Russian volley. The infantry 
are the fingers that get the final grip of a position; 



202 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the artillery removes thorns from their path. We 
could still see our reserves on the slopes at the right. 
The advance line which had taken one trench must 
now be almost under the guns — hidden from our 
view and the Russians', perhaps, as well, by fields 
of grain. 

Over the rise of a knoll, where the valley of Towan 
broadens into the plain before the gap of Yantsu, 
we saw a battalion or more of running figures 
disappear into the kowliang. To-day for the first 
time the kowliang played a part for this army — 
a little foretaste of a part that it will play in 
the military history of two nations if we fight a 
decisive battle with Kuropatkin on the plains of 
Liaoyang before harvest time. The seed of kowliang 
is like that of the millet that we have at home. Its 
aspect is that of Indian corn. With stalks a little 
thinner, with leaves as plentiful, it grows to a height 
of from eight to twelve feet. Only two months ago 
we saw the Chinese planting the season's crop at 
Feng-wang-cheng. Fierce suns and plentiful moist- 
ure have already sent it to more than the height of 
a horse's head. 

What are our Japanese men going to do when 
they no longer have hills to screen the sudden flank 
movements of their agile, tireless limbs? has often 




c3 






a 
o 



:3 






^ 

^ 



>. 



c3 



s 

^ 
§ 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 203 

been asked. The answer is the kowliang, and when 
not kowliang Indian corn, which is also plentiful m 
Manchuria. We had an object lesson to-day. 
All through the fight, with increasing curiosity we 
had noticed (past the gully which led to the ridge 
battery) an artillery ammunition train hugging 
the cover of a bend in the valley. It seemed as un- 
attached in this action as if it were lost, strayed, 
or stolen. All through the fight we heard the re- 
ports of a Japanese battery— whose cough-cough- 
cough told the hill-gazers it was on low ground— 
which we tried in vain to locate. 

It was in the kowliang back of the knoll over which 
we had just seen the battalion which supported it 
pass to the charge. The perfect concealment not 
only included the men and guns, but the flashes them- 
selves, which broke under the cover of green leaves. 
You gunners of the skyline battery, so triumphant in 
the morning, it will be more gall to you to know that 
your fairest mark you never saw at all! These 
pieces in range of twenty Russian guns were as 
unmolested as you on your eminence, and their 
deceit made the sport of the satire have a finer edge 
than yours. Need I say again that the Japanese 
never wait on the enemy but go to him— which is 
the first instinct with a martial race? Need I en- 



204 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

large on the nerve of that artillery commander who 
serenely took his battery into that position ? It is by 
such nerve that victories are won. 

Advancing infantry could have had no better pro- 
tection than that line, making its way steadily across 
the plain toward the mouth of the pass, received from 
its coughing friends in the kowliang. When they 
should reach the pagoda they had the Mecca of their 
advance. The finish of the day's work was in sight. 
The skyline battery was still throwing mirrors out 
of the window while the Russian house blazed; still 
bursting shrapnel harmlessly high over stretches of 
field already clear of our advancing right; and the 
desperate rapidity of its fruitless fire became the final 
touch of irony of the battle. But the voices of the 
Japanese guns were now the loudest; the Japanese 
infantry were forcing near the hour of flight. 

On the other side of the tower was a wooded hill 
with four guns. These and the Russian infantry 
trenches in front became in the last moments the 
kowliang battery's fair prey. Our infantry appeared 
and reappeared until we saw a line forming at the 
base of the ridge on the point of which stood the 
pagoda like a light-house on a little promontory, with 
the fields of the plain for a calm, though a green, sea. 
Time was short for the wooded-hill battery opposite. 










<o 



I 



BATTLE OF TIENSUITEN 205 

We saw the Russian infantry that supported it flying 
up the valley in scattered groups and figures, with men 
on horseback directing them and shrapnel bursts from 
the kowliang battery remorselessly pursuing them. 

Suddenly something dark with horses attached was 
shot out of the wooded slope, and as suddenly stopped 
like a toboggan full of people striking a stone wall. 
There was a moment's melee and then we saw horses 
galloping up the valley. (The Russians had still 
another gun added to their list of lost, as we learned 
next day.) 

On the left the Russian artillery and infantry still 
held that division and their line of retreat safe — de- 
stroying all hope of a "bag." Evacuation for the 
Russians was inevitable from the moment that we saw 
a Japanese officer with soldiers streaming after him 
ride up the ridge to the tower. It was good to think 
that that pagoda was ours. Now we should see what 
it was like ; we should not have to look at it again as 
the landmark of a forbidden spot — though firing from 
the left where the Russians were covering their re- 
treat still continued. 

We might see no more. That was the verdict of 
the espionage which keeps the foreigners from too 
far exposing themselves. Riding back to where the 
pack-horses waited for us with a meal, we saw the 



2o6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

staff at dinner in the court of the new temple of 
Kwantei. An officer who had just ridden in was 
silhouetted in the doorway. Evidently he had 
brought great news — possibly of the success of the 
brigade of the Second, which, assisting the Twelfth, 
killed, captured, or wounded a thousand Russians in 
a cut de sac in ten minutes with a loss of twenty on its 
own part. The chief of staff was interrogating him; 
other members looking up from their plates exclaimed 
their interest. The General himself was listening un- 
moved, just as he had all day. He had done a char- 
acteristic day's work. Against our total of eight 
hundred casualties, the Russian loss, besides the five 
hundred dead they left on the field, must have been 
fifteen hundred, including the mortally wounded 
general in command. 



XVII 

AFTER TIENSUITEN 

The Second. Army has followed a line of railway 
over comparatively level country; the Third has had 
the academic work of a siege. The First has been 
confronted in its vast swinging movement with the 
two strongest barriers that nature can present to a 
military advance. We have met the enemy in three 
decisive battles ; one on a broad river, one of defence 
and another of offence on the range which stood be- 
tween us and Liaoyang. Strategic combinations in 
which other forces than our own played a part gave 
us the first line of heights on June 29th. By July 4th 
Kuropatkin had changed his mind again. He tried to 
shake our position in vain. On July 17th he came 
with sixteen battalions and failed again. July 31st 
we drove the Russians from the second line of heights, 
which made the passes ours, as the action of May ist 
made the Yalu. 

Generically, the humblest soldier must know that 
certain roads lead to certain objectives. The knowl- 
edge whets his impatience. It makes the surround- 

207 



2o8 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ings of temporary quarters miserably familiar in a 
week's time. For a month we had dwelt in the awe of 
a strong position before us which we must take. The 
gaze of our longing eyes was centred on the white- 
based pagoda of Towan. We wanted to see that 
tower as much as a country boy wants to see the city. 
Correspondents hoped that their recalls might be 
postponed until they should set foot on this forbidden 
spot, battery and rifle guarded. 

On the happy morning of August ist we knew that 
we should not have again to ride over the stony ascents 
of Motien Pass, only to descend as we had come. We 
were going over the field from which the enemy had 
fled to judge, in the felicitous hour of victory, the man- 
ner of his going. To a soldier this hour is like the 
morning after the girl of his heart has accepted his 
proposal. 

Now the tower of Towan is a fine piece of old 
Chinese architecture. As a tourist, I might walk ten 
miles to see it. I might spend an hour in looking it 
over — but not when a battle had raged in the neigh- 
borhood. On Monday morning last it was purely a 
symbol of the joy of possession and no drawing card 
at aU compared to a battery of dummy guns with 
which one lieutenant-general had tried to fool another. 
On the rise where the tower stands, logs of wood 



AFTER TIENSUITEN 209 

pointing over a parapet rested on the wheels of Chi- 
nese carts. From the General Staff in St. Petersburg 
to this Chinese trick is a sublime step. Heads set 
with slant eyes are not so easily deceived. The real 
battery was on the wooded knoll on the other side of 
the valley. If the Japanese had fired at the dummy 
battery instead of at this, the joke would have been 
on them. As it was, the biter was bitten with the 
most savage satire. 

Five or six hundred yards from the tower lay the 
proof of slant-eyed perspicacity and accuracy. The 
dark thing with horses attached which we had seen 
through our glasses on the previous evening shoot 
down the incline and stop like a toboggan against a 
stone wall was a field-gun in flight, with the hound 
of shrapnel on its heels. The upset was as thorough 
as the telescoping of a locomotive and tender that 
have gone over an embankment. The ammunition 
cases had shot out of the limber and lay where they 
had fallen. The gun carriage rested on one wheel, 
with the gun wedged against a tree trunk. In the 
battery's position we found the explanation. There 
lay three dead horses almost in the distances they hold 
when hitched in a team. 

As usual, the Russians had waited a little too long; 
the Japanese infantry had crept nearer than they 



2IO WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

supposed; the Japanese guns had let loose all their 
blasts of hell at the critical moment. Probably 
gunners as well as horses were hit by that one shell, 
which meant the loss of a gun. With half a team 
and a weakened complement, the Russians tried 
to escape. The regular artillery road continued 
through the woods for some distance. But two of 
the escaping guns, from lack of control over their 
teams or from the demoralization of their drivers, 
who evidently thought that they were shortening 
the distance, bolted down into the valley by a side 
road. One, as we saw by the wheel tracks, went on. 
The other could not make the turn. Men and horses, 
caisson and piece, went over in a tangle. Perhaps 
already the whisper of pursuing bullets was in the 
ears of the gunners who got to their feet after the 
shock. (A dozen men, unfluttered by danger, as 
we learned the next day, were unequal to righting 
the gun.) There was only one thing for the Russians 
to do and that was to take the breech and run. 
This they did. 

On up the valley where the Russian encampments 
had been yesterday, the Japanese troops were set- 
tling down in that fashion of order and cleanliness 
which lends to even the common soldier a certain 
aestheticism. In the houses and the shelters they 



AFTER TIENSUITEN 21 1 

had come into a legacy of swarms of flies and the 
filth which breeds them. The stones of the brook- 
side were spotted with garments laid out to dry. 
In the stream itself, the square shoulders and muscu- 
lar torsos stretched themselves in the relaxation of 
joyous health and in recuperation from a day and 
a night on the field and the contemplation of rest, 
wine-thrilled by the recollection of victory. In a 
week you will find that the flies are largely ex- 
terminated, each soldier undertaking private war- 
fare. 

From their new camps the litde men of Japan 
look up at the earth-colored tracery of artillery roads 
adjusted with the same easy angles to a retreating 
gun and limber, with its six-horse team, as the curves 
of a railroad track to a train. The longest of these 
leads to that skyline battery which, on the 31st, had 
in a few hours from a contemptuous altitude made 
the others supremely ridiculous, and had its own 
futility made supremely ridiculous in turn. With- 
out a shell against itself, it silenced batteries; and 
later in the day, by indirect fire, it threw scores of 
shrapnel hopelessly high over positions where there 
were no Japanese, while a perfectly screened Japanese 
battery within easy range put the finishing touch 
to the battery on the wooded slope— which was- the 



212 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

very point of the whole Russian artillery position set 
on the terraced heights in the form of a triangle. 

The road to the skyline battery spoke a volume 
of praise of some engineer. It held any soldier's 
admiration. It was proof enough of the aca- 
demic capacity — the book preparation — of the higher 
branches of the European Russian army; a thing 
apart from the verve, the initiative, which makes 
counter attacks as the first premise of holding a 
defensive position. I can imagine this engineer's 
exasperation should he have seen the utter lack of 
proper trenches and roads at the Yalu, where vege- 
tating Siberian garrisons, dreamily neglectful of 
the old-fashioned formulae they had learned at school, 
went out, Xerxes-like in their contempt for their 
enemy, to meet with a surprise as overwhelming to 
senility and adipose as the absconding of an old 
confidential clerk is to a merchant. 

From the skyline battery, all the Japanese positions 
from the Russian view-point of the 31st are revealed. 
Where the Yangtsu Pass crosses the second range, 
the heights project in an elbow that on its angles sinks 
by slopes into an enveloping valley, which opens 
into a valley at the right and a valley at the left. 
Attacking infantry must cross the levels — there was 
the nut — but once it was on the slopes, the heights 



AFTER TIENSUITEN 213 

formed a tangent. Nature made the position for 
guns to delay the progress of a superior force. The 
gunners at the skyline battery had the whole field 
of the advance before them. While the left division 
of the Japanese could not know by sight what the 
centre was doing, the Russians might know as 
readily as you may see what is going on in two rooms 
of a house that has no ceiling. They could keep 
as cool as if they were on review. 

From the parapet, those who had been with our 
left division the day before pointed out the abruptly 
descending gap through which the central column 
of the left Japanese division had debouched in the 
hope of getting on the flank and rear of the Russians. 
But the skyline battery had the "drop" on the bat- 
teries of the central column of the left division and 
on all its infantry. All day a part of the Japanese 
line lay within two hundred yards of the Russians. 
If Nippon Denji put up his head, Ivan Ivanovitch 
let go a dozen bullets. Nippon Denji is always 
ready to charge if you give him the word. But here 
the Russians had a grip of their hill, and they shot 
in a way that showed their disposition to stay. The 
Japanese had climbed part way, but when he 
put his hands on the window-sill his knuckles 
were soundly rapped. Meanwhile, the voices of 



214 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the guns at his back spoke with no confident 
tone. 

As I have said, the fine edge of Japanese courage is 
skilfully handled. So at nightfall these two lines 
were still hugging the crests of two ridges, with the 
forbidding and steep valley between them. There 
the pressure of the infantry of the central column of 
the army as a whole forced the Russian line to give 
way. Below the skyline battery, in the lap between 
two crests of another ridge, was the '^ saddle" battery. 
The difference between the two was that of the scene 
of peaceful target practice and an extinct inferno. 
If you wish to see what shell-fire may do I commend 
you to the "saddle" battery. You may pick up 
shrapnel bullets on the road as you would pebbles. 
Within a circle whose diameter was not ten feet I 
counted six empty Japanese shell cases where they 
had fallen. A novice might have thought that these 
intact cups of steel meant that the charges had not 
exploded properly. The contrary was true. The 
cases should remain whole, so as to expel the two 
hundred bullets which they carry with killing velocity. 
Two of them lay on either side of a hole that a com- 
mon shell had made. 

Common shell had burrowed the earth as prairie 
dogs burrow the plain. There were moments, as 



AFTER TIENSUITEN 215 

we watchers knew, when explosions were almost as 
frequent as the ticks of a watch. The swaths of 
scattered missiles and of holes mapped the accurate 
line shooting of the opposing batteries on the 
plain. The Japanese seemed to say: ''We will 
make you stop, anyway." They brought their 
guns closer; they concentrated all available powers 
of destruction on one point, as they did at the 
Yalu. 

In the actual positions themselves the common 
shells had burrowed right and left and under the 
guns. Lay your hand on the parapet and a shrapnel 
bullet was under it. Seventy-five yards below the 
slope was the finest victim of Japanese accuracy 
that the war has yet brought forth; for gun had 
destroyed gun. One of the spokes of the carriage 
lay where it had fallen in the emplacement when it 
was struck. How the wreck came to the position 
it occupied, the Russians must explain. The breech- 
block lay by the overturned piece, which bore the 
date of 1903 and must have only lately come from 
the arsenal. In the chamber was an unexploded 
shell, just as the gallant gunner thrust it home when 
the fatal blow came. 

But the Russians had paid a far greater price 
than this in tribute to Japanese determination, which 



2i6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

redeems, by the way they use it, the inferiority of 
their artillery. Report tells us that here General 
Keller received his mortal wound. A shrapnel 
bullet in the hip for a favorite commander in this 
hell where Russian courage stood undaunted may 
well make a story which will ring through hero- 
worshipping, mediaeval Russia. He could see well 
here, though not as well as in the skyline battery. 
If his staff were with him, he exposed the very spinal 
cord of his force. Meanwhile, the Japanese general 
— he of a race that only a half century ago fought 
with swords in battle where the leader must lead 
with his own fencing arm — sat in safety, his staff 
around him, in touch with all his units, remedying 
errors and meeting situations as they appeared. 
But this general had taken over the formulae from 
the latest school — von Moltke's — and applied them. 
Keller was an heroic spectator, but not a modern 
commander. While he looked on, one of his bat- 
teries for lack of information — for the lack of the 
closely knit nervous system of intelligence — was wast- 
ing its shrapnel. He was as much out of place as 
the conductor of a train on the cow-catcher. He was 
simply a magnificent personality; and nowadays 
personalities win decorations and machines win 
victories. 



AFTER TIENSUITEN 217 

Every battery but the skyline one left some relic 
of hasty departure. That of the ridge on the south 
of the road had thirty-seven unexploded shells lying 
in a nice pile on the fresh earth of the emplacements. 
By what we see and what we hear through the 
Chinese and the prisoners, we learn how the enemy 
received its defeat. 

The Chinese brought us the news of General 
Keller's death. In quite another way we learned 
of the presence of military attaches on the Russian 
side during this fight. Our Austrian attache was 
sitting by the roadside where a Japanese hospital 
attendant was talking in Russian to one of two 
wounded prisoners. 

^^We were a party of observation," he said, "five 
of us. The little men got around us and I was shot, 
and I said to the others, 'You get out and save your- 
selves!' But this big fool here" — and he nodded 
toward the hulking, blue-eyed fellow at his side — 
"he said he would not leave me. So he got shot, 
too, and here he is — the big fool!" 

Then the speaker saw the Austrian. 

"We have a man in a hat just like that on our side," 
he said. 

"Is he a short, fat man?" asked Captain Dani, 
shrewdly. 



2i8 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

''No, he is tall and thin," was the quick response. 

And then Captain Dani knew that his comrade 
of the General Staff had seen the batde, too. Though 
they are only a few miles apart, when they meet 
again it will be in Vienna. 



XVIII 

A correspondent's life in MANCHURIA 

This is less about myself than about those who 
have intimately concerned my existence for the last 
four months, with results sometimes strange and 
sometimes humorous. While the army has waged 
occasional battles, the correspondent has waged a 
continuous one. 

When the original sixteen assigned to the First 
Army started, we had a contract with a Mr. Yoko- 
yama to feed us and transport our baggage. On 
demand he was to keep up with a column that was 
going at the rate of fifteen miles a day. Mr. Yoko- 
yama was the victim of misinformation, a delusion, 
and the correspondents, and we were the victims of 
Mr. Yokoyama. 

In order to feed us in a mess, naturally he had 
to keep us together. We were landed at Chenampo 
over two hundred miles from the front. Possibly 
the staff had that fifteen miles a day in view and 
thought that we would arrive in a decorous body, 

for that was four months ago, I repeat, when the 

219 



220 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Great System that serenely plays havoc with Russian 
inefficiency had as yet had no field experience with 
one phase of war — the correspondents — for which 
the Great System had not duly provided. The 
sixteen did not wait on fifteen miles a day. They 
went as many miles as they could, each his own way, 
whether donkey back, horseback, or on foot. The 
canteen struggled on, coolie borne, after individuals 
who cared little whether they were fed or not till they 
reached their destination. 

These draggled, muddy men in all kinds of habits 
rode into a general's headquarters which was the 
centre of the precise movement of fifty thousand men 
in one uniform, and boldly they looked if they did 
not ask the question: ''Now bring on your battle! 
We're all ready." 

The Great System was busy. It really had no 
place for spectators, particularly at rehearsals. It 
set the limits of the correspondents' observations 
on the hither side of hills that hid the portentous 
work of engineers on the river bank. There the 
strange order of beings that had run away from 
their transport — the only beings in all that vast hive 
of industry who were not moving a pontoon, digging 
a gun position, building a road or doing something 
toward the army's object — dwelt grimly in isolation 



CORRESPONDENT'S LIFE IN MANCHURIA 221 

in a group of Korean houses. They had travelled ten 
thousand miles; they had waited two months in 
Tokio, and bitter memory reminded them that they 
had been sent to the front as war correspondents. 

The Great System decided that one correspondent 
might come from their "compound" each day and 
get the news for all. This was like standing outside 
the inclosure and having a man on the fence tell 
you who has the ball on whose fifteen-yard line. 
The Great System could not understand that it 
existed solely for getting a '^beat" for each individual 
paper. Some correspondents had previously com- 
plained that they had not had the privileges accorded 
to others. This led the Great System to make a point 
of insistent impartiality. Then there were growls 
because it was not partial. Truly the Great System 
must have been sorely puzzled. When the Great 
System was ready to give our cue, we were taken to 
heights where we saw the artillery duel of one day 
and the battle of the next. Still some correspondents 
were inclined to demand their money back at the 
box-office. No one man had seen more than any 
other. 

Meanwhile, the canteen in broken parts had ar- 
rived and set up its tent among the Korean houses 
where the correspondents were encamped. Mr. 



222 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Yokoyama had not come to Korea himself. His 
affairs were in the hands of a manager. The manager 
could not speak any English. This saved him many 
comments, which were toned down by indirection. 
One can not in reason send for an interpreter to 
say things that are better not printed, such, for 
example, as " Oh, ." 

Mr. Yokoyama had taken his idea of a cam- 
paigner's diet from the tourists who frequent the 
hotels of Japan. He thought they subsisted en- 
tirely upon meat. He had brought only a little to 
eat, and that consisted mostly of canned sausage. 

Aside from feeding us for a stipulated sum, the 
canteen was to bring mineral waters on sale. In 
mentioning our wants before we left Tokio, one 
correspondent had remarked that a little champagne 
was good in case of sickness. Evidently Yokoyama 
thought that we were all going to be ill all the time. 
(For there is a bar in the Imperial Hotel frequented 
by tourists.) He brought far more bottles of cham- 
pagne than sausages — and the champagne was as 
sugary sweet as ever Latin drank. Our meals 
became town meetings, where individuals — and 
there are as many individuals among the corre- 
spondents as there are divisions in the army — set 
out their likes and dislikes. 



CORRESPONDENT'S LIFE IN MANCHURIA 223 

"Treacle is what you want!" said a spindling 
Englishman who had served in South Africa. " Give 
me treacle, I say. I told these bursters to bring 
treacle. With plenty of treacle — good old black 
treacle — you can ride day in and day out and be 
as fit as a fiddle." 

"C^sar conquered the world on treacle," ob- 
served '^ Jimmy" Hare, the oldest of us and the 
enfant terrible of the camp, "I know all about it, 
now. He slid down the Alps on it, and chucked it 
all over the Gauls and gummed 'em up so they 
couldn't fight." 

"Rather liverish, I should say," remarked our 
academic correspondent. 

"Bacon and beans are the thing," said Collins, 
"and big fat flapjacks for breakfast. They're what; 
they keep your ribs apart." 

" 'Tucker' is what you want," said an Australian, 
who represented a British paper. "Tucker" was 
always his cry. He declined to go into details. 

"Italian sausages!" shouted John Bass. "I knew 
there was something wrong about this canteen 
from the start, and I laid in an Italian sausage. You 
can use an Italian sausage for a brickbat, insect 
powder, a tent peg, a pillow, and to grease your 
boots with. When you have to eat — actually eat 



224 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

and so destroy — other things to satisfy your hunger, 
you have only to smell of an Italian sausage and 
your hunger is gone." 

There was only one way to obtain coherency of 
opinion and action, and that was to elect a mess 
president. Nominations being in order, each sub- 
scriber turned his thumb toward his neighbor. 
Alphabetically was fair every one thought except 
John Bass, and he was it. Poor old Bass! He had 
troubles of his own as well as those of others. The 
Italian sausage was helpful in reviving his nerves. 

Our understanding in Tokio had been that not 
only were we to pay all bills by check, but by checks 
we were to draw cash whenever we needed it. In 
Tokio, indeed, there was no accommodation which 
was not readily granted. Alas, our manager had 
not funds even for coolie hire. From Wiju to An- 
tung we provided our own coolies while the can- 
teen kept on feeding us. The supply of sausage, but 
not of sweet champagne, ran out. We took to eggs 
and chickens morning, noon and night. 

^'If we only had a little treacle to go with them — 
good old black treacle." 

Our Australian still called for ^^ tucker." 

The one Frenchman was equally explicit. Occa- 
sionally he would rise to demand : 



CORRESPONDENT'S LIFE IN MANCHURIA 225 

**For what do we pay our fifteen yen a day?" 

The canteen was impossible. We reverted to a 
natural state of individualism. Behold three of us 
now, Collins, Hare, and myself, camped beside a 
mountain spring and a mountain brook. Having 
brought no cooking outfits or proper supplies we 
"rustled" the best we could. A few cans of ancient 
corned beef and a few cans of counterfeit condensed 
milk (made of corn starch) were found in Antung 
itself. At Ping Yang a Frenchman had a store, but 
he was not renewing his stock. (It was in this store 
that "Jimmy" Hare ate an whole bottle of olives 
without getting indigestion.) Seoul is farther than 
Ping Yang, and in all more than three hundred 
miles from our present base. There is also European 
food in Japan, which you may have by sending a 
man all the way there and back. 

At Tiensuiten a plain ham becomes more expensive 
than red-head duck in London, and a can of Cali- 
fornia fruit a luxury like hot-house peaches. Even 
cash is costly. Eight days ago we sent a servant all 
the way to Antung to get a thousand yen in specie 
from the branch of a Japanese bank that is already 
open there. 

Drawn up beside our tents are the three Chinese 
carts which form our commissariat train. It is 



226 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

with fear and trembling that we think of the size of 
the retinue which has to be fed, bound as we are by 
the customs of the East. Sometimes the foreigner 
tries to reform the usages of the teeming milhons, 
and the East smiles like quicksand under the sun 
and swallows him in. The union decrees that there 
must be two Chinese to a cart, and injunctions are 
out of the question. Besides the Chinese we have 
two Koreans. One takes charge of the pack-ponies; 
the other is Daniel Webster. Daniel's chin is 
missing; his forehead modest. 

^^I didn't make my face, and I don't work with my 
face," he says. 

He came to us as a coolie — in the dirty white 
cotton garments, the queue, and the toplofty head- 
gear of his kind. To-day his hair is clipped short, 
he has a jaunty little white outing cap, European 
coat, and golf breeches, while there hangs from his 
pocket, in further proof of hope, prosperity and 
progress, a German-silver watch-chain with links 
an inch and a half long. Where he got these things 
his employers, least of all, should know. He takes 
especial care of the '^cap." That is not for wear 
when he washes dishes or digs trenches. Probably 
no citizen of the United States could walk farther in 
a week than ^^ Daniel." His pipe-stem legs are like 



CORRESPONDENT'S LIFE IN MANCHURIA 227 

Stilts in the steps they take. He goes joyfully on 
any errand, however hard the rain, however deep 
the mud. Should our caravan move on to St. Peters- 
burg, you would still find ''Daniel" attached. The 
subject of Korean sloth and official extortion has 
for the first time found out what a joyful, living 
world of opportunity there is outside his native 
"Hermit Land"— and all this on two pounds a 

month. 

The Master of the Household, in charge of all the 
retinue, is Kochi, our interpreter, who speaks excellent 
English. On this campaign he has learned many 
things which were not taught at Cornell, where he 
went to school. He draws maps, translates docu- 
ments, keeps the Chinese in line with the few words 
of their language that he has learned. He has never 
yet admitted that he was tired or hungry. 

Early in the spring, when we had to live entirely by 
the grace of cans, we watched the growing corn, 
beans and potatoes with encouraging eye. We have 
them all on our table now. Fowl, however, are grow- 
ing scarce in the land. They are not to be had by 
beggary, purchase, or strategy. The Russians were 
here before us, and the strays they left behind Japan- 
ese thoroughness has gleaned. (One advantage of a 
retreating army is that it has first call on the chick- 



228 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ens.) The thrifty Chinese hides the remaining few 
as the ancestors of another generation. 

And this brings us into the department of Kobay- 
ashi, our forager. He took the place of Kurotaki, 
who went home ill. I have said that no one in the 
canteen spoke English, and it was from the wreck of 
the canteen that we drew Kobayashi. He did not 
speak English at the time. 

"Hour or hive words," he said. 

As a rule, when you engage a boy he professes to be 
a masterful linguist, with the result that you find he 
is not at all. Kobayashi' s policy was the contrary. 
He took us on trial. After a few days, when he had 
concluded that it was worth while receiving us into 
his confidence, we found that he knew colloquial 
English excellently. 

According to his own tale, Kobayashi has been a 
miner in Australia, a sailor on many seas, not to men- 
tion that he helped to build the Brooklyn Bridge. 
Reckoned up in years, his services make him a cen- 
tenarian. As to his actual age, you can no more tell 
it by his wrinkled face than the age of a pine tree by 
its knots. 

If we want anything done that is not just in the 
line of the other "boys'' we call Kobayashi. 

"All the time work for Kobayashi," he occasionally 



CORRESPONDENT'S LIFE IN MANCHURIA 229 

grumbles. "Kobayashi up three hour clock, build 
fire, boil water! Go to bed late night! Gentlemen 
want anybody when everybody sleep call Kobayashi. 
Damn!'' 

^^ Cornel Come, Kobayashi, you are unhappy to- 
day!" we rally him. 

Then over that wrinkled brown face will creep a 
smile up to the eyes that twinkle between their 
slants. 

"I dunno, sir. All right," he says. 

This morning I asked him if he thought the weather 
would clear. He squinted quizzically and long at 
the four points of the compass and said: "I dunno, 
sir." But that was merely Japanese self-depreca- 
tion, and I knew it. He had a most definite opinion, 
as he promptly showed. "Wind sou'-sou'-west, sir. 
Yes, sir, it going to rain some more." 

Incidentally, Kobayashi waits on the table. When 
he grumbled, sailor fashion, once, we gave this task 
to another. Then we saw that wrinkled face (so un- 
knowing or so knowing, as it wills) in the background, 
critical and wistful. We restored him to his place. 

About our beverages Kobayashi ever maintains a 
polite fiction. 

"Cocoa, tea, coffee?" he asks. 

We call for tea or coffee. 



230 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Then Kobayashi shifts from one foot to the other 
and utters a httle gigghng: "He, he!" to accompany 
his grin. 

"Cocoa!" we say. 

Cocoa is all we have. 

Kobayashi and our Chesterfieldian groom are such 
stuff as the Japanese army is made of. We had orig- 
inally a regular groom with high recommendations, 
whom we sent home for drunkenness, neglecting his 
horses, and trying to slay the grooms of our neighbors. 
Ugajin was simply a boy of seventeen or eighteen, 
whose father owned a curio shop in Nikko — a boy 
who wanted to see a battle, a real battle. 

He won the trio with his bow, the bow which he 
has carried right through the campaign. The horses 
are sleek and well cared for, and in odd moments 
Ugajin works Japanese landscape effects in our tent 
yard with admirable taste — the same Ugajin who, 
when some Russian scouts were reported in the corn 
near by the other day, rushed out to assist the soldiers 
with a stone in hand, while Kobayashi seized a club. 
Naturally, this is a martial race. 

Whenever there is a battle we get a new camp, and 
then we wait until the strategic demands of the whole 
calls for another advance. The Great System under- 
stands us a deal better than it did at first. It knows 



CORRESPONDENT'S LIFE IN MANCHURIA 231 

now that we are not here to give information that will 
benefit the enemy, though that information is the 
kind that makes news for the cable men. And there 
you have the rub between the arm of war and the arm 
of publicity. 



XIX 

A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 

I FIRST knew you when the Allies fought their way 
through the Boxers to save the Legations; and you 
did most of the fighting without ever a look at the 
gallery, and marched into Peking clean and erect and 
cheerful, with no stragglers. Watching your skir- 
mish line on one side of the road and the Russian 
on the other, we observers made certain prophecies 
which military wiseacres who had not been on the 
march scouted. We listened to their scepticism and 
smiled as anyone may smile when it is so easy to be 
right as it was that day on the advance into Ho-she- 
wo, when the little men left the big men straggling 
behind them in the dust. You seemed then a veri- 
table machine of a soldier, Nippon Denji, who could 
do a goose-step all day and wash away your fatigue 
with a bath at night. 

Now I know you better; not to say that I know 
you well. There is a barrier which is said to pre- 
vent that. You are yellow and I am white. You 

come from one end of the earth and I from the other, 

232 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 233 

and all the heresies and the prejudices which may- 
descend to an island people belong to us both. The 
Supreme Being made us quite different, I suppose, 
so that each could say that he himself was the natural 
being and his way the natural way. 

My eyelids are horizontal and yours are on the 
slant, and mine are as odd to you as yours are to me. 
When I write it is straight across the page, with 
letters into words and words into thoughts. You 
have no alphabet; you write down the page with 
signs that mean ideas. You start at the right hand 
and write backward — or is it that I write back- 
ward? — and this makes your book end where mine 
begins. This has been the way of my people for 
two thousand years, and for a thousand years it was 
the way of the Romans and those before the Romans 
who gave my people their first learning. Your way 
has been the way of your people for two thousand 
years and it was the way of the Chinese who gave 
your people their first learning for more thousands 
of years than history dares to count. 

The wise men who know — if they have not changed 
their minds lately — say that we are all from a com- 
mon stock that started from some scientific Garden 
of Eden. (Were your eyes slanted or mine straight- 
ened m route? If we knew that, we might settle 



234 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

which really does write backward.) Your ances- 
tors went to the East and mine to the West and we, 
for one thing, have a keener memory of the fig-leaf 
incident than you. You went to a group of islands. 
So did we Anglo-Celts, changing all the time till we 
were distinct from another people with quite a dif- 
ferent language and quite different characteristics 
who were only across a channel from us. (We over- 
came that a little. We do think that a Frenchman 
may be half way decent, now.) 

In ancient times you went to sea mostly to fish; 
and sometimes to invade Korea. We went to sea 
for trade and for war, for glory and for piracy, for 
Christianizing strangers and unquestionably, all in 
all, for the good of the world. Three countries, 
England and Spain and Holland (which stole the sea 
bottom for its gardens) had so much of the ocean 
around them, that they kept going farther and farther 
till America was discovered, and eventually Spanish 
priests came to one of your southern islands from the 
Philippines, which had become Spanish property 
now. They made converts; after them, the war- 
riors at their backs might have been expected to 
make conquests. You feared this; and rightly, if 
Spain had not been on the decline, if the other Euro- 
pean States had not been so busy quarrelling over 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 235 

India and America and other near places that Japan 
was as yet unprofitably far afield. 

At the time, in the evolution of your society a 
new master, the ^^Shogun," established himself at 
Tokio, with a closer-knit governmental organization, 
while the Emperor at Kyoto became a figure-head. 
The Shogun did a thing unique in all history. He 
closed the door of his country to all foreigners and 
penalized an attempt at migration with death. 

"You mind your business; we will mind ours," 
he said to the world. "You leave us alone on our 
little islands and we will not trouble you on your 
continents." 

No anti-expansionist could have asked more. To 
clear the way a large number of Christian converts 
were massacred. This was most religiously mediae- 
val. It is no secret, Nippon Denji, that some of 
my forebears did equally wicked things. We don't 
talk much of them, especially when impressing the 
Orient with our moral superiority, for we are much 
ashamed of them and glad they are not living to-day. 

For three hundred years Japan lived within her- 
self, a hermit among the nations. Your Shogun was 
lord over many governors of provinces, who were 
hereditary, as he was. In time their families became 
anaemic and the prey of formality. You, Nippon 



236 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Denji, you, the common man of Japan, were learn- 
ing to read and write and think. You travelled 
to behold Fuji, your beautiful mountain, and your 
waterfalls and temples, which your artists painted 
on kakemonos that were so cheap a coolie could buy 
them — and the coolie did buy them. Yes, you were 
getting stronger and the crust of feudal lordship over 
you was getting weaker. The time was near when 
you would break through and a new order of things 
would be the result. 

Meanwhile, the island people on the opposite side 
of the earth had found other uses for the energy of 
steam than making a tea-kettle cover dance. This 
invention turned seas into ponds and oceans into 
lakes. It said to all kings and princes, ^'I am your 
over-lord henceforth. I propose to bring the nations 
near together and soften their prejudices with trade 
and touring. '' You could no longer be unsociable 
if you would, Nippon Denji. With the commerce of 
the world going past your door, the time was com- 
ing when you would have to open it or someone 
would follow a knock with a blow. 

Commodore Perry was very gentle, considering 
the way that such things are usually done. He came 
into the harbor of Tokio with that new kind of 
vessels which belched smoke from a funnel amid- 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 237 

ships (the thing that made it go without sails) and 
could belch something worse from the funnels that 
projected from the sides. His squadron was as out- 
landish to you as it would have been to the Romans 
if it had sailed up the Tiber in Scipio's time. And 
you felt just the way that the Romans would have 
felt if a modern squadron had broken out of the sea 
and trained its guns on the Capitoline Hill and sent 
word ashore that the officer commanding would 
like to arrange a treaty. Probably the Romans 
would have made a treaty just as you did; but the 
necessity would have hurt their pride a little, as it 
did yours. 

You soon learned that what one foreign nation had 
secured all the others insisted on. Many treaties 
followed the first, and inch by inch the foreigners 
gained points, till they had their own concession in a 
harbor where they lived under their own laws. Still 
they asked for more; and still the Shogun tempor- 
ized. It remained for an English trader to play the 
part of the sacred goose to Japan, all unintentionally, 
by giving the alarm. He rode outside the compound 
of Yokohama one day to show the sights to some 
friends from Shanghai. Over in Shanghai, when 
a crowd of coolies were in your path you could cut 
about with your riding- whip and they would run. 



238 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

This man had hved in Shanghai. He did not know- 
that Japan was different. Strike at a crowd of 
cooHes in Japan with your riding- whip and you would 
be taken home on a Htter. 

It happened on this occasion that the Prince of 
Satsuma was passing along the Tokaido. He was 
one of the most powerful of all Daimios and an 
out-and-out Tory. One of the immemorial laws 
of the land was that no one should pass through a 
Daimio's retinue, on pain of death. It was a foolish 
law and you had begun to feel that it was, Nippon 
Denji — now that you were reading and thinking 
and going all the way across Japan to see Fuji — 
and there was an aching in your bones for a change, 
just as there was in the bones of the French people 
at the time that Marie Antoinette thought if bread 
was so dear the poor ought to eat the nice little cakes 
that you buy for a sou. Richardson wanted to 
cross the road. The retinue was in the way. 

"Oh, I know how to deal with this people!" he 
said, showing off a little to his guests. 

He rode in front of the Prince. The Prince had 
been in Tokio disagreeing with the Shogun on this 
very subject of foreigners. He was gouty and 
short-tempered. 

"Cut the beast down!" he shouted. 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 239 

His retainers did so. A foreign nation had 
another cause. Kagoshima was blown to pieces 
by shells and an indemnity laid. The jingo Daimios 
began to act on their own authority. If the Shogun 
would not resist the barbarians, they would. The 
Daimio of Choshu had some miserable forts at 
Shimonoseki Straits. He fired on foreign merchant 
ships that tried to pass against his orders. Were 
not the Japanese the best swordsmen in the world? 
Only let them go and they would make short work 
of these rude, ill-mannered barbarians. The Daimio 
lined up his samurai with their bows and arrows 
against an allied fleet, which battered down his forts 
as easily as they had those of other yellow races. 
From that moment, the Japanese knew that the 
Tories were wrong as well as they knew that security 
through the Shogun was hopeless. 

Aboard one of the ships of the fleet were four 
young samurai (including the present Marquis Ito 
and the present Count Inouye), who had shaved 
off their queues and run away from Japan on pain 
of death to see the world. They went ashore, tried 
to reason with their sovereign lord, and were stoned 
for their pains. After the bombardment Choshu 
turned to them. Through all Japan ran like a 
flame the realization of the situation. Every Japan- 



240 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ese, of course, had no doubt that his civiHzation 
was superior to the Occidental. He saw his country 
with her priceless pearl of independence at the 
mercy of the so-called barbarians. India was an 
example of what befell the weak and the disunited. 
Should her fate be the fate of Japan ? 

Ito and Inouye said that the first thing was to pay 
the indemnity. The sum of that indemnity was 
extortionate; and one country, the United States, 
by a vote of its own Congress, returned the amount 
to Japan. Don't forget that, Nippon Denji! 

The next thing was to get ships and guns like the 
foreigner's and turn them against him, if need be. 
The old dynasty of the Shogun and the Daimios 
fell of its own weight. But the lower ranks of 
samurai^ more or less studious, too poor for dissi- 
pation, always exercising, had the strength of mind 
and body to form a new ruling class. At Kyoto 
was the lineal descendant of the Sun Goddess, at 
once an emperor and a divinity. The new move- 
ment carried him to Tokio as its head. He ruled in 
reality again. Fortune favored you, for he was and 
is a strong, wise, imperturbable man. Diplomacy, 
Japanese diplomacy, played for time, while the army 
prepared. 

Under the old regime about a fourth of the popu- 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 241 

lation had been idle. They were the samurai of 
different grades, retainers of the nobles. The clan 
loyalty of Scotland was pale beside theirs. Noble 
fought noble in continual internal strife; and a noble's 
fight was his retainers' to the last man. If the honor 
of a samurai was impugned, he committed harikari. 
His moral code was bushido; which means that 
honor, as he viewed it, was before all things. You, 
Nippon Denji (man of Japan), were the worker. 
Thanks to your travels and your education, a united 
Japan was coming to mean more and more to you 
and a province less. 

Suddenly in this new army the boy from the fields 
drilled in the same awkward squad with the samurai; 
rifle and bayonet took the place of samurai sword. 
You know how your country ran to the fad of 
foreign things at that time. Old armor and old 
blades were sold for a pittance. All Japan turned 
to the weapons and the tactics of Europe. Bushido 
became the privilege and the duty of the conscript. 
The youth of the land were knighted at the recruiting 
office. In place of your Daimio standing for one 
province was your deified Emperor who stood for 
every province. 

Many fictions have been printed in foreign papers 
since you took the centre of the world's stage, Nippon 



242 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Denji. They give you the quaHty of fatalism; a true 
Mussulman's carelessness about death. When Che- 
foo lacks for news, it tells the world that some officer 
has committed harikari. I have yet to hear of a 
single instance with our army. Suicide, besides, is 
not limited to Japan alone. When a captain goes 
down with his steamer rather than save himself, the 
meaning is the same as the harikari of a Japanese 
officer on a captured transport. Harikari is a par- 
ticular form of death adopted because it tested the 
victim's nerve in face of the inevitable. Harikari was 
never frequent. Duels were not frequent in the last 
century; but to read fiction you would think that 
gentlemen fought every day. 

I have found you different from the Chefoo idea; 
for I have seen you in camp and in battle. I have 
found that you have that same love of life that good 
soldiers usually have, in that you know how to sell 
it dearly. It has been said that your one ambition 
is death in battle. I have found that your ambition 
to kill Russians is much stronger. You are the 
least careless about death of any veteran soldier I 
have ever known. That is why you are such a 
good soldier. In your lines I have seen less of 
the bravado of the veteran who heedlessly exposes 
himself when lying under cover waiting for a charge ; 




Copy rigid, igG4, by Collier s JlW/cly. 

A veteran of the Twelfth Division, who had marched from Seoul to 
Liaoyang and fought in five battles. 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 243 

of the officers who heedlessly stand up with their line, 
than in any other. 

Of course, I have heard your officers use that 
stock expression ^^to die for their Emperor." Their 
practice is better. It is to make their lives just as 
valuable to their Emperor as they can. Fatalism 
embraces the idea of ^'I don't care." And you do 
care, Nippon Denji. Fatalism says that you will 
die when your time comes — why bother? It im- 
plies too ready an acceptance of the inevitable to 
make a good soldier. Frequently one race uses it 
as an excuse for another's courage, thereby magni- 
fying its own as something dependent upon a higher 
quality. In Asia you find many fatalists, but most 
of them will scarcely lift their hands to prevent 
death. The Chinese have that quality much more 
than you; for you never accept death as long as you 
have the strength to send another shot at the enemy. 

The reward in heaven which calls some soldiers is 
not for you. Your reward is in the honor that your 
death for your Emperor brings to your family. In 
your village the people will point out your house and 
your father and mother — more especially your 
mother — and say the magic words about a son who 
has fallen for his country. In other lands, too, 
houses and mothers have that pride. But the 



244 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Japanese mother does not weep — not in public — 
when she hears the news. The custom in Japan is 
to smile in public, and that is the outgrowth of causes 
as clear as make it usual to give a man on foot on a 
remote country road a *'lift" in a carriage and not 
to do so on Broadway. This does not mean that 
that mother does not care; far from it. But she is 
the mother of a samurai now. 

You must not and do not show your feelings, 
Nippon Denji. None the less, you suffer. I have 
seen you struggling forward with your limbs aching 
as they took their short and stubborn steps; but if 
I smiled, you smiled back. I have heard a groan 
from a cot in a field hospital and when the occupant 
saw a foreigner was present, he drew his teeth 
together and tried to smile. But I have seen that 
same convulsive effort of pride in white men's armies. 
The samurai youth were taught to bear pain and 
hardship without murmur. Besides, we foreigners 
think that your simple life saves you from the 
"nerves" that curse Europeans. Or is it that you 
are simply trained not to have them, as the Christian 
scientist trains himself to the illusion that there is no 
illness ? 

Nowhere do you better show that you are a true 
samurai than on the march and in camp. You are 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 245 

obedience itself. Your officer provides for every- 
thing in the text-book and you do as he says. The 
fault with most armies is that human nature does not 
permit of everything in the text-book. If you are 
tired, you do not throw off your blanket and knap- 
sack; you keep on with it. The road behind a 
regiment is as clean of Japanese equipment as that 
before it. You have a marvellous way of making 
yourself comfortable when you break ranks. That 
is because you squat instead of sit and some corn- 
stalks tied together make a shady place for you. A 
true samurai private bathes frequently, washes his 
clothes, and observes sanitary regulations. You do. 
That is one of the pleasures of being attached to your 
army. Very rarely do you take too much sake. 
Property may be left about carelessly. It is safe 
from your hands. Not even horses are "taken" if 
not watched in this army. That is wonderful- 
wonderful 1 

You men of the Second Division, to which I am 
attached, have particularly won my heart. Your 
home is in rugged northern Japan; you are, for the 
most part, country boys. Your gendeness, your good 
humor, your smiles while you march, fan in hand, 
present a picture almost akin to effeminacy, wholly 
at odds with that when you are charging up a hill 



246 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

or firing steadily from a trench. Your manners 
everywhere give war a certain refinement. I have 
seen a heedless correspondent ride into the formation 
of a regiment and stop a whole line of tired men. If 
he had done it with his own army, blue things would 
have been said to him; but you looked at him curi- 
ously, as if you were about to poke your fingers into 
the cage. 

You are impersonal to the last degree. In your 
impersonality lies one of the causes of Japanese effi- 
ciency. The Japanese seems to think of himself 
always as one of many; his squad, his company, his 
regiment — not himself! That makes team-play easy. 
On the march when ranks are broken, the officers 
of European armies stand apart. It is bad for dis- 
cipline not to keep the gulf between rank and line 
always in evidence. I have often seen the Japanese 
officer sitting among his men by the roadside and 
chatting with them; but always he is the officer, 
and so clear is the definition of feudalism still that 
they do not think of presuming. 

You like to fight as squads, companies and regi- 
ments just as well as some white men whom I know 
like to fight individually. One common weakness 
you have with every soldier of the world is home- 
sickness. When I have talked with you as best I 



A LETTER IN CAMP TO NIPPON DENJI 247 

could through an interpreter, you have expressed 
your unhappiness over a delay in camp in a strange 
land to which you had come purely for the purpose 
of fighting. I heard you express the same senti- 
ments that a Kansas man did one morning in the 
..Philippines, when his regiment lay in line waiting 
for the order to charge. 

"Come out, Aguinaldo, and bring all your men 
and all your rifles," he said. "Kansas is ready to 
fight you to a finish. A lot of us will be killed ; but 
the rest will start back for the little old United States, 
anyway." 

Of course, there was no element of fatalism in the 
remark made by a white man, or in the frequent 
announcement of a regular going into a fight, that 
everybody has to die sometime and maybe it will 
be his turn to-day. 

Like every other soldier, you make your new^ land 
as much like home as you can. You lay out little 
landscape gardens in Chinese yards; you build 
paths out to the road. You paste rice paper that 
you buy at the canteen — oh, that glorious canteen 
that has delicacies from Nippon! — upon the walls 
of your rooms in a Chinese peasant's house. You 
put a mat on the floor, after washing it, and you 
always take off your boots when you go in. If you 



248 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

have not a house you snuggle under the shelter tent 
that you carry in sections on your back — and take 
off your boots just the same. Oh, the joy of taking 
off your boots! They are the hardest of all the 
samurai equipment to bear. 

We have travelled far together, Nippon Denji, first 
over Korean roads and then over Manchurian roads. 
You are as truly a foreigner in this land as I, though 
you can make ideographs on the sand which Korean 
or Chinese v^ill understand. Homesick you may 
become; it will not make you less martial. Rather 
it speaks your praise. One of these days, if you sur- 
vive, you will return, a village hero, to the clean mats 
of your own house. According to popular chroni- 
cle, your mother will be sorry that you did not die 
for your Emperor. The truth is that she is human 
and she will be heavenly happy; but either way she 
would smile. 




On Sept. ist, the Russian frontal line fell back on Liaoyang. On the 2d, the First Army had 
occupied Hayentai (the hill marked 2). On the 3d, the Russian frontal line was in full 
retreat over the four bridges across the Taitse, and its forces were pressing the First Army 
as they went. 



XX 

LIAOYANG — FIGHTING OUR WAY INTO POSITION 

For five months the First Army had not seen the 
sea, a plain, or a railroad train. When we fought, 
it was over hills and ridges; when we camped, it 
was in twisting valleys. On August 23d we were 
still at Tiensuiten, which is twenty miles from Liao- 
yang. Before we might fight in the great battle we 
must fight two battles of our own. Before Kuroki 
could swing into line with Oku and Nodzu, and 
the three converging columns should form an intact 
force, we must take a chain of majestic heights on 
either side of the armpit-deep Tang River. 

The three divisions of our corps still followed the 
three roads which we had taken from Feng-wang- 
cheng: the Second (General Nishi) — the men of Sen- 
dai and northern Japan — formed the centre, the Im- 
perial Guards (General Hasagawa) our left, and the 
Twelfth (General Inouye) our right. 

The Guards were in motion on the 24th. On the 
morning of the 25 th we could hear their artillery- 
fire while we broke camp. The nature of the coun- 

249 



250 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

try was such that no one observer could hope to see 
even at a distance the work of more than the divi- 
sion to which he was attached. That of ours was to 
be particularly difficult infantry work, and therefore 
we loaned temporarily a part of our guns to the 
Guards. While, roughly, each division had a sepa- 
rate task, the success of each was largely dependent 
on that of the others. 

On the night of the 25th, when, a week's rations 
in my saddlebags, I spread my blanket under a 
tree, the Thirtieth Regiment was resting on a road 
near by. I knew the Thirtieth of old. Its Com- 
mander, Colonel Baba, stepped out of a twelfth cen- 
tury Japanese screen into a modern uniform. Two 
of his companies repulsed the first Russian attack on 
Motien Pass, and then pursued twice their numbers. 
Again, on July 30th, one of his lieutenants, scouting 
a hill-top, came back yelling in boyish glee: '^Slip 
your packs and hurry up ! The whole Russian army 
is in the valley on the other side." 

The Sendai men wanted nothing better than that. 
They did hurry — like mad. Gasping from their 
climb, they snuggled down to work with their rifles. 
Vainly the Russians deployed and three times vainly 
charged. When the Sendai men came to count 
dead and prisoners there were more than a thousand 



LIAO YANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 251 

— not to mention the shelter tents and other spoils of 
a whole regiment. The commander of the battalion 
of the Thirtieth, which was engaged, doubtless apolo- 
gized, Japanese fashion, for not getting more. 

On the threshold of a desperate charge — begin- 
ning an orgy of danger and of physical and mental 
strain without precedent — these veterans sat chat- 
ting softly and smoking cigarettes. Each had a 
white band around his arm, a badge to prevent fatal 
mistakes in a dash on a pass in the dark. And I was 
lulled to sleep by the murmur of their talk, and awoke 
with the sound of guns, to learn that their night attack 
had succeeded. 

As ever in the First Army's career, we were in the 
valley and the Russians were on the hills which we 
must take. In front of the Second, northeast by 
southwest, ran one long and intact ridge of the height 
of a thousand feet or more. One end of this we had 
won in the dark; that was the key. My favorite 
mountain battery, also a famous night worker, had 
here burrowed emplacements for its guns on the 
flank of the Russian trenches. Its ponies and am- 
munition train were well sheltered in a gully. Part 
way up the hill-side in dips, where the enemy could 
not see them, was our infantry getting into position 
for the attack. Our movement was to sweep to the 



252 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

west and thus wheel upon the length of the crest 
which the Russian infantry held. 

Having missed Lieutenant Hamamura (who looked 
after the correspondents attached to the Second Di- 
vision) I made my way alone, which is not difficult 
in battle as long as guns and rifles make a noise. In 
my path I found some trees which not only made 
welcome shade but were excellent protection when 
bullets came my way. Only a small part of me 
needed to project beyond the trunk in order that I 
might see well. 

On one of the ribs of the ridge which descended 
to the valley, I could see the smoke of the volleys 
of a detached Russian trench. The long summit 
above, with its bowlders clear against the skyline, 
had three cones. Now the men who were advancing 
toward these by single file in three columns were 
not firing. Each had the cover of some rib that rose 
above the line of the general slope, and was more or 
less at an angle with the line of the crest. The man 
at the head of each column carried a little Japanese 
flag, and all had their rifles swung at ease. The man- 
ner of their advance seemed to say: 

"We're quite used to this now. You'll catch a 
few of us, we know, but we'll take the hill — and that's 
what we were sent to do." 



LIAOYANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 253 

They were the men with the ball. Their "inter- 
ference'^ was the incessant rifle-fire poured over their 
heads by detachments posted at high points. Mean- 
while, the little red-centred flags were steadily 
waved, so that the "interference" should never mis- 
take friend for foe. These flags seemed animate, 
as if they were sweating and stumbling and righting 
themselves again as they picked their way over the 
rough, steep ground. 

The most western column was advancing under- 
neath, and in a line parallel to that of the Russian 
trench on the rib. The top of this trench was scraped 
by a sheet of flying lead, which some of my friends 
of the Thirtieth Regiment were weaving from a rib 
about a thousand yards away; and that is why the 
Russians could not take advantage of a mark fairly 
under the muzzles of their rifles. Some a little de- 
tached from the others apparently were unaware 
of the Japanese approach. When the head of the 
column swept over the parapet, a dozen figures sprang 
up as abruptly as so many jacks-in-the-box. The 
surprise was as sudden as the meeting of two men 
with umbrellas lowered at a street corner. Only 
the Russians were not at all embarrassed as to the 
proper thing to do. Their hands went up at the 
same time as their heads. 



254 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Having cut the car out at the siding, the train went 
on to keep its schedule on the main track. Only 
half a dozen Japanese had entered the trench. They 
left one of their number to guard the prisoners. 
Then they rejoined the line, which, without seeming 
curious or interested, passed underneath the trench 
— according to programme. The incident was sig- 
nificant of the mind and the method of the Japanese 
army. i 

Five hundred yards from the sum.mit the three col- 
umns took their final breathing spell and ' came 
together in three groups for the assault, while the 
little flags fluttered in the bushes that gave them 
cover. The mountain battery which had been quiet 
now realized the psychological moment for which it 
had been prepared by hours of night work. Any shot 
in line found the target — that is, the main Russian 
trench. The storming parties had a breathing space 
and girded themselves for their final effort. Now 
they climbed upward as if death were at their heels 
instead of ahead of them. They did not fire; their 
^'interference" could not fire without too much risk 
of hitting them. The only thing was to reach the 
top, and before they could some must die, as every 
man of them knew. The flag of the centre column 
was waved triumphantly on its appointed cone a 



LIAOYANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 255 

minute before the other two. Then we saw the 
figures on the skyhne rushing to any point of vantage 
where, by sending bullets in pursuit of the flying 
enemy, they could score losses which should balance 
their own side of the ledger. The reserves might 
now go forward safely over the zone which had been 
fire-swept ten minutes before. 

Thus the day's fighting was finished, but not the 
day's work, nor the day's drudgery, nor the day's 
misery. The wounded were yet to be brought in, 
and the dead and the fuel to burn them collected 
by weary limbs. The plunging fire of the Russians 
against their foe, struggling through the rough fields 
and over rougher, untilled slopes, had cost the division 
six hundred casualties, including the death of a colonel. 

Late in the afternoon a deluge of rain washed the 
blood off the grass. The flood of water turned dry 
beds into dashing rivulets. The flood of slaughter, 
also settling toward the valley, passed on by the 
single hospital tent— already congested at daybreak 
from the night attack — into the village, whose popu- 
lation was crowded into a few houses in order that 
the wounded might be crowded into others. Through 
every door -way you caught a glimpse of prostrate 
figures and of white bandages with round red spots 
which made them like wrapped flags of Japan. 



256 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Dripping hospital corps men brought in dripping 
burdens covered with blankets or with the matting 
in which the rice and horse fodder of the army are 
transported. When darkness came, the lanterns of 
the searchers twinkled in and out on the hill-side. 
Dawn found them still at work collecting stray Rus- 
sian wounded, who had lain suffering all night in the 
rain for a dollar and fifty cents a year and the glory 
which the Czar's service brings them. In the bushes, 
in the declivities between the rocks of many square 
acres — could every fallen man be gathered? How 
many cries coming faintly from feverishly dry lips 
and finally dying into a swoon were unanswered? 
At some future time, when a Chinese peasant stum- 
bles over a set of bones, the world will not be the 
wiser. 

In a room sixteen feet by ten, in which were twenty 
Chinese, I slept on a chest about four feet long, and 
awakened in the night to find my wet feet insisting 
that my head should take a turn at hanging over the 
side. In the morning, a mist which thickened at 
times into rain shrouded hill and valley alike. Min- 
gled with it was the smoke of crematory piles, where 
layers of bodies were consumed between layers of 
wet wood. Riding back up the ridge, I passed sixty 
dead Japanese placed in a row under the dripping 







3 



-£3 
4) 



03 



'-0 



a; 






1/3 

i=l 

a 



LIAOYANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 257 

trees of a Chinese garden. Burial was to be their 
lot. There was not time to burn them. 

Our division's losses were greater than at the Yalu. 
By this standard and by the physical effort expended 
as well, we should have rested. But we were only 
beginning. Our halt was due solely to the mist, 
which would not permit us to fulfil our programme 
to advance at the break of day. The infantry re- 
mained on the slippery hill-sides, where they had 
raised their slight shelter tents and placed wet corn- 
stalks on the damp, spongy earth for beds. On the 
crest of the ridge, while the bodies of the Russians 
who had fallen in the trenches there yesterday were 
being buried, the staff stood helplessly looking out 
on the gray awning that hid the next valley and pro- 
longed for a few hours the life of more than one fated 
big soldier of Russia and little soldier of Japan. 
Quick as General Nishi was to attack by night some 
critical point with definite features, he hesitated to 
make a general advance in the fog, which eventually 
rose as quickly as a drop-curtain. 

Instantly we knew not only the scene, but also the 
plot of the play. The deep cutting revealed at our 
feet opened into a valley which led westward to the 
Tang-ho, with its fertile bottoms. The town of An- 
ping was hidden by the projecting base of a bluff. 



^58 WITH KtJROKI IN MANCHURIA 

We knew its location by a pontoon bridge thick with 
Russian wagons going in the same tell-tale direction. 
The wagons crossed stolidly. There was no pre- 
cipitation in the lowering of the tents of the camp 
on the other side. 

That first clear view of our position quickened 
every pulse at thought of catching a rearguard strad- 
dle of a stream. The mist had favored the Rus- 
sians. It had made our advance cautious and given 
them cover for retreat. Over the ridge our infantry, 
breaking their way through the kowliang, made 
new paths over slopes where probably no army had 
ever passed before. After them went the mountain 
battery, sliding and plunging horses jerking the lead- 
ers off their feet. 

With the bridge as a centre, our division was press- 
ing in on the retreat from one flank and the Twelfth 
from the other. We trusted that the Twelfth was 
nearer than ourselves. The Russian cavalry was 
moving back and forth on our side of the river; the 
Russian infantry stretched across the mouth of the 
valley, while far over the hills the infantry and gun- 
fire of the Twelfth pressed closer toward the pon- 
toon. An hour before dark remained. As detach- 
ments drew off, the line of Russian infantry became 
thinner. Some cavalry forded the stream, and then 



LIAO YANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 259 

some infantry, too, did not wait on the bridge. "We 
are going to make them scramble for it," everybody 
thought, "and there will be sharp work down there 
in a few minutes." 

"No, we're not," we knew a moment later, when 
one flash and seven more in succession spoke from 
the other side of the river to the left of the bridge. 
No shrapnel came in reply. The entry of the battery 
into the game settled it. The rest had no more dra- 
matic interest than the last half of the ninth inning 
to the victorious "outs." 

That night three correspondents — Mr. Knight 
of the London Morning Post, Mr. Frazer of the 
London Times, and myself — followed the division 
commander the way that the mountain battery went, 
and this led us into the big valley running west to 
Anping and then to the left into another defile where 
your horse stumbled over stones when he did not 
stick in the mud. By eleven o'clock we were settled 
in a filthy native farmer's house, to which we were 
welcomed by the weeping of children and the snarl- 
ing of dogs. We fed our horses, we ate some biscuits, 
and we slept a little. But how the house looked 
outside or inside by daylight I can not say. Wq 
departed before dawn, but not until after theregi^ 
ment that had built their camp-fires ancj fallen asleep 



26o WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

in the surrounding kowliang. And it was the same 
regiment that had buried its dead in the rain and 
spent the previous night in the rain. 

On the 28th, the God of Battle rewarded us with 
a parterre box, where we could see the spectacle as 
a whole and in detail as well. At this point the Tang- 
ho bends sharply. By Anping it runs for a time 
due north; a mile from Anping it runs almost due 
east. From a high peak we looked down upon the 
bluffs in the stream- enclosed angle which concealed 
the waiting enemy, with irregular slopes mounting 
to a high ridge at his back. 

Far to the west, on some rocky summit, I could 
see the glitter of a heliograph sending messages to 
and from all parts of the Russian line, which must 
fall back systematically lest some fraction or other 
find itself surrounded. We did not know then that 
the heliograph was on the hill of Chusan, which was 
the centre of the actual frontal defence of Liaoyang 
itself. We named it ^'Kuropatkin's eye," and we 
were glad to be so near to the gentleman himself; 
so near to a decisive battle. 

In the kowliang of the river bottom, on the op- 
posite side from the Russian position, snuggled the 
Japanese infantry. Welcome was the hot August 
sun to dry clothes that had been wet for two days — 



LIAOYANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 261 

welcome until ten in the morning. By noon it was hell, 
and the uniforms were wet again, not from rain or 
mist, but from perspiration. Overnight, while the in- 
fantry marched to its place, the guns had buried them- 
selves in positions on the high ground nearest the river. 
My favorite mountain battery was set to look after a 
trench on the opposite bluff. In five minutes it had 
emptied that trench of a company of infantry. 

These big Russians had a good mile to go in the 
range of shrapnel-fire. They were being kicked up- 
stairs instead of down-stairs, which is harder, espe- 
cially on a hot day. When for a moment the mountain 
battery left them alone, they would bunch together 
at one side or the other, where the ascent was easier. 
Thus they made a good target again, and bang went 
a shrapnel over their heads, and wearily they spread 
out again under the commands of their gesticulat- 
ing officers. Just when they thought that they had 
passed out of range, a burst of blue smoke, with scat- 
tering fragments, hurried them on like the crack of a 
slave-driver's whip. It was a man chase, nothing 
more nor less, with the gunners standing as easily to 
their guns as spectators to their glasses. The 
Russians must have felt like the tenderfoot who has 
to dance to avoid a group of cowboys' playful fusil- 
lade about his soles. 



262 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

On the other bend of the river facing Anping were 
two companies of infantry which, under the bluff 
edge, had been subjected to an occasional fire from 
the field batteries in that direction. The officer in 
command of this line must have drunk a half-bottle 
of vodka and decided that he would do something 
brave. He swung out his companies in close order 
and began marching them down the hill, as if he 
intended to ford the Tang-ho and wipe out our whole 
division. The commander of the Japanese battery 
which had this slope in plain view must have felt like 
a man who hears of a legacy left to him by an un- 
known relative. By the watch, that line broke in 
one minute and a half after the first shrapnel invited 
retreat. Then the blue smoke wreaths pursued the 
scrambling units according to example. The busi- 
ness of this force was to have punished the Japanese 
infantry crossing the river all it could and then to 
have got away under cover. Possibly the commander 
was tired of waiting and wanted something desperate 
and sensational to happen, in order to keep him and 
his tired soldiers awake. 

Other Russian detachments were driven out from 
their nesting places, or, from another view-point, they 
fell back, having held the Japanese on this line as 
long as the mind behind the heliograph desired. 



LIAOYANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 263 

To force a division to deploy over this mountainous 
country means of itself that its advance can not be 
more than four or five miles a day. By noon the way 
seemed fairly safe for the crossing. Forty or fifty 
men broke from the kowliang in a seeming foot-race, 
and dashed into the stream just below the village 
which lay directly opposite to us. 

You could see the splashes of a few bullets in the 
water. The forders no more stopped to fire than a 
picnic party getting in out of a thunder-storm stop to 
shake their fists at the heavens. Wading up to 
their armpits, the racers hastened on till they threw 
themselves down in a dip of the opposite bank. Then 
they looked up to see if there was anything worth 
firing at. Another section of a company made a 
dash in their wake, and another, and so on. At 
the same time crossings had been made in the same 
way at four other points of the river, the farthest 
point being below Anping. At 1.15 we had no 
Japanese on the other side; at 1.30 there was a lodg- 
ment of five columns, which, in single file, swept 
transversely over the slopes, while the guns pursued 
any fleeing targets that appeared, whether mounted 
or on foot. The paths were steep, the sun was hot, 
and the lines seemed only to creep. 

When we went back to a hill in the rear where 



264 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

division head-quarters were, we found General Nishi 
as usual smoking cigarette after cigarette, with his 
back to the field. When it was so dark that you could 
not see the scene of action — as if that mattered to 
him, which it did, for his wire told him from hour 
to hour where his units were — the General lighted 
still one more cigarette and languidly mounted his 
horse. We, who had come a long way to report, 
retraced our steps over miry paths across the river 
to the village, to which we bade good-by without 
breakfast before it was light. We went to a ridge, 
of course, where, of course, we could look across a 
great dip in the mountains (which sank to the valley 
of a stream, of course) toward another ridge. We 
could see our troops advancing with their accus- 
tomed tactics, but without opposition. 

An officer told me that he would wave a handker- 
chief when there was any action, and I went down 
to a little brook, where I washed my face and boiled 
some rice and roasted an eggplant and an ear of corn. 
About noon, when the signal came, I departed and 
followed a winding valley road, which brought me 
to a village on still another bend of the Tang-ho. 
We were told that we should be here for a few days. 
This was in keeping with all camp talk, which pro- 
vided first for an approach to the main positions at 



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LIAOYANG— FIGHTING INTO POSITION 265 

Liaoyang, and then for the final assault, as two 
separate actions. 

By this time I had become intensely human and 
personal. My pack-ponies came up and I had a 
good breakfast; while I was told that the division 
head-quarters had departed overnight, giving us the 
slip — as if we minded freedom of movement! — and 
from over the ridges to the west I heard the pounding 
of guns in such volume as I had never heard before. 
It was like the noise of the surf, rising to a roar now 
and then as a long breaker rolls in. 

At last, when I climbed a ridge, I was to see the 
plain and Liaoyang. The havoc of five hundred 
guns was outlined as clearly as the battle pano- 
rama of a Gettysburg or a Sedan when you climb 
the stairs after paying your quarter at the door. 
The great conflict had begun. Faintly, and but 
faintly, one other experience expresses the feelings 
of a correspondent of the First Army, and that is 
when you are coming into a port after a long voyage, 
a telegram of vital decision and the change of a new 
land awaits you. 



XXI 

LIAOYANG — THE ARTILLERY DUEL 

The expiring range flings westward a few de- 
tached ridges and hills, which are to the vast plain 
what rocky island outcroppings of a precipitous 
coast are to the adjacent sea. Between them gleams 
the steel track that caused the war; that marks the 
course of the main armies and is the first premise in 
all their strategy. 

Flowing northeast at right angles to the railway 
is the Taitse River, which makes a break in the 
range. The old Peking Road runs beside it. On 
the southern bank is a typical Chinese provincial 
capital. There the Russians had many storehouses 
and sidings. The last of the heights forms a barrier 
of defence to the east and southeast. These things 
made Liaoyang a battle ground — these things and 
a fortress at the terminus of the railway which must 
still cling to a hope of relief. 

As from a promontory you might see a naval battle 

beneath, so we saw the artillery duel of August 30th 

and 31st. The town itself waited and held its breath. 

266 



LIAOYANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 267 

The only sign of action there was the miHtary balloon, 
a yellow ball that rose higher than the old pagoda 
tower. To the southward you saw the movement 
of hospital and ammunition trains, and under the 
shade of groves and farmhouses the waiting horse 
and foot, whose aspect said that the army was en- 
gaged. 

All these were set like pattern-work within a 
fence of fire presently as safe from wounds and death 
as a library nook from a driving storm. Farther 
on along the railway is a camel's hump of rock, 
Chusan— which we of the Second Division had named 
"Kuropatkin's eye," from the heliograph we had 
seen there during the fight of the 28th. In a semi- 
circle, of which that was the midway point and the 
Taitse River was the diameter, lay the Russian line 
of defence. The Second Army, which had fought 
its way along the railroad, was to extend over the 
plain to the left of the "eye" and enter Liaoyang 
from that side. Eastward from the "eye" run the 
hills and detached ridges which merge into the range 
at right angles. Here in the "corner," among a 
chaos of heights, the Fourth Army, which had 
mastered the passes on the road from Takushan, 
came into position. On its right was the First 
Army, which had elbowed its way with many flank- 



26S WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ing movements through the mountains, until at 
last it saw the plain. With the three shoulder to 
shoulder on the day the masters had set, all the 
problems each had had to solve became significantly 
past history. 

That old question which we had ever asked in the 
months of our waiting in camp on our way from the 
Yalu — ^^Will Kuropatkin stand at Liaoyang?" — 
was answered for the trouble of climbing to the top 
of a ridge by the flashing of five hundred guns, like 
the sparks from wood when a red-hot iron is drawn 
across it. That scene of armed strength, the most 
magnificent since the Germans were before Sedan, 
did not turn my thoughts to Kuropatkin but to 
another general, the head of the Russian railroad 
system. One sweeping glance told you that Prince 
Hilkoff had "made good" with his single-track 
railroad. 

It was strange that the first great battle with 
modern arms should be fought in the suburbs of a 
Manchurian town, and strange to find here on this 
day a tribute to a Russian nobleman because he 
had learned railroading from bureau to locomotive 
over vast expanses in America; strange, too, and 
Oriental, that a correspondent attached to the Japan- 
ese army should see the operations of the Russian 



LIAOYANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 269 

better than those of the Japanese side. For a group 
of foreigners had taken the place of Kuroki's army. 
They occupied the right end of the Hne resting on 
the Taitse. 

On the afternoon of the 29th, the Second Di- 
vision had swung into position here very demon- 
stratively, and on the night of the 29th it fell back 
very quietly and, crossing the Taitse to join the 
Twelfth in Kuroki's flanking movement, left corre- 
spondents and attaches with their mentors to choose 
a place where they could see the plain for twenty 
miles around. In this relief map the only reduction 
to scale was the limit of our field-glasses. 

Realizing the object of each movement, we were 
to have the problems of a battle's tactics worked out 
before our eyes. The four bridges back of the town 
spoke of tragic possibilities. Only once during the 
first day was there a sign of life on any of them. 
Then a train crossed, and by its smoke as it moved 
northward we could denote the line of the railroad. 
Behind a parallel row of hills to the eastward were 
the camps of the battalions protecting the flank. 
A schoolboy could have understood instantly how 
Kuropatkin must go once we drove these battalions 
back. With the bridges destroyed after his crossing, 
the Japanese frontal line was momentarily power- 



270 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

less, and Kuroki might have to resist the pressure 
of the whole Russian army. When the Japanese 
Second Army, swinging to the left over the level plain 
to the west of Liaoyang, could force back the Rus- 
sian right, then the front must fall back to the town; 
so it must if we secured possession of the '^corner." 

The gap on our right between the Fourth and the 
First Armies offered an opportunity such as Welling- 
ton used at Salamanca. If Kuroki could make his 
threat on the railroad insistent enough, if Oku and 
Nodzu could shake the Russian defence on the 
Liaoyang side, then Kuropatkin would be too busy 
elsewhere to spare the troops to plunge into the 
opening. Therein lay the ^^ nerve" of Japanese 
strategy; therein its success. The board and the 
pieces were before us, and we who sat on the hills 
as spectators understood the game — aye, and the 
mighty stake. 

When Captain March, the artillery expert of our 
General Staff, looked on a volume of gun-fire never 
equalled in the world before, he drew a deep breath 
and said: ^'This is great!" 

Again he said, '^This is great!" and again. 

But it was not the words or even the way he spoke 
them, as much as March's deep breaths, that ex- 
pressed our feelings. All, soldiers and correspond- 




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LIAO YANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 271 

ents alike, had talked by the camp-fires of little 
campaigns, of what a great battle with modern arms 
would be like — and here was our ambition glutted 
to satisfaction. 

In that "corner" where ridge met spur in the 
chaos of battling landslide, we could mark the po- 
sitions of our batteries as you mark the factory 
portion of a town by its chimneys. Over each one 
hung the blue curls of the enemy's shrapnel. Deeper 
than their neighbors spoke our Russian guns captured 
at the Yalu, which were with the Imperial Guards, 
now the extreme right of the main line and attached 
to the Fourth Army. 

One Japanese battery was marked as a particular 
target. I counted twenty puffs over it inside of a 
minute. We could see the guns that sent them out, 
and their flashes were ugly orange red, and the 
puffs, except for the lightning flicker of their bursts, 
might have been a display of daylight fireworks. 
For an interval of a few minutes the fire would cease, 
except for an occasional shot, as if the gunners were 
keeping their hands in. We would conclude that 
the Japanese had had the worst of it. Then, as you 
would flip out your fingers from the palm, one after 
another, the air would be sprinkled again with blue 
curls. 



272 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

The fact was that the marked battery was doing 
ugly work among the Russian infantry, as we could 
see, and whenever it broke out afresh, the Russian 
guns had to concentrate and drive its gunners back 
to their casemates. Its value to our side was that 
it required a far-outnumbering predominance of 
disciplinary shells; and in such amenities and checks 
and balances you get the sense of an artillery duel. 

No heliograph was being used on the hill of Chusan 
on that day, you may be sure. It was an island in a 
fog of shrapnel smoke. Along the spurs and as far 
past it as we could see, there ran literally a line of fire. 
In the dip between the ''eye" and the spur the Rus- 
sian guns were two tires deep. There we saw the 
game with weapons that hurled sixteen pounds of 
steel jacket, enclosing two hundred odd bullets, played 
in much the same way that boys wage battle between 
snow forts. The trick is to fire when the other side 
is exposed, and to keep down when the other side 
replies. Every Russian battery, except those lost 
in the haze beyond the "eye," was visible; but we 
could not see a single flash from a Japanese gun. 
We could see only the results of the Japanese fire, 
while the results of the Russian fire we could deter- 
mine in the "corner" alone. 

In your ears always was a roar, which at times 



LIAOYANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 273 

was as thick as that of a cataract. If there were 
intervals free of any report, it brought you the speech 
of infantry so continuous that it purred like a rubber 
tire over a freshly macadamized road. This remind- 
ed you again that the guns were only the brasses 
and the drums of this international orchestra. On 
the last of the hills beyond the Russian batteries lay 
the Russian soldiery, and still beyond them, in front 
of the Japanese guns, the Japanese. 

What charges were being made and what charges 
were failing we could not tell. We only knew that 
any successful advance must send back the Russian 
guns. The infantry of the Fourth Army we knew 
were moving forward. We heard the cheers of a 
position taken, but saw not one of the Japanese sol- 
diers who had taken it. Then we saw the Russians 
going over the ridge in a counter-charge, and we heard 
their cheers when they recovered what they had lost. 
Like every other part of the Russian line, they were 
put in a position to resist to the death. They had 
been surprised, but they had kept the faith with the 
counter-charge. 

These cheers called the spectator. I wanted to be 
nearer to the infantry line and to feel the pulse of 
that arm which is the bone and sinew of battle. But 
I knew, too, that I should miss that whole which 



274 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

had the fascination of a fortune at hazard on a throw. 
At any moment the Hne might break, and the con- 
fusion of many regiments and many guns would be 
under our eye. We watched its length feverishly for 
the first sign of weakness. 

Facing the heights on which we sat were the Rus- 
sians awaiting the attack on our right. The battery 
on the ridge directly between us and the town had 
us in easy range. One of the attaches chivalrously 
reasoned that its commander recognized through 
his telescope that we were only sight-seers. More 
likely, having in mind the attaches and correspond- 
ents on the Russian side, he was not likely to waste 
his ammunition doing his enemy a favor. 

Between the base of the hills and the Taitse River, 
another battery v/as stretched across the intervening 
levels. Two idle batteries, then, at least, waited all 
day while the division that threatened them was 
miles away. This gap was protected by only the 
thinnest screen of Japanese cavalry. All the trans- 
portation of the First Army, its ammunition, its 
flank, its rear, lay exposed to vigorous assault by 
horse or foot. 

Early in the war, the essays of the Russian cavalry 
had been met by infantry of the First Army catching 
them in the valley with a plunging fire. Now we had 



LIAO YANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 275 

not even a few companies on the hills that looked 
down on the Taitse-ho and the Tang-ho. As we 
made the feint of a division serve as another division, 
so we made the Japanese infantry's reputation pro- 
tect our line of communication. And the Russian 
gunners lay in the shade, and the Russian infantry 
looked over the near ridges for our coming. I 
wondered that Sheridan and Stuart did not turn in 
their graves. 

Toward noon of the 30th, the clear sky of the early 
morning became overcast. Clouds hung above the 
smoky mist of the shrapnel. Nature was in no mood 
for rain ; but the thunders of the guns literally shook 
it out of the heavens. The gusts of moisture came 
down angrily and niggardly. They were thickest 
where the fire was thickest. But none of the guns of 
either side stopped. As night came on, the flashes 
of the muzzles and of the shrapnel bursts put points 
of flame in a lowering mantle of darkness. When I 
fell asleep, I still heard some firing. It was the gun- 
ners' blind effort to dismay the infantry which lay 
grimly waiting on one side and grimly ambitious on 
the other. 

The morning of the 31st was as fair as that of the 
30th. Silver streak of stream and dust streak of road, 
and line of shrapnel smoke and gun-flashes, disap- 



276 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

peared into the haze of an August day fit for the rip- 
ening of kowliang and corn. Liaoyang lay still, a 
patch of silence on the plain. Its four bridges, in- 
cluding that of the railroad, were still undotted spans 
across the stream. The white and drab houses of 
the native city merged with the green of their gardens. 
The military balloon was making its first morning 
ascension. Inside of the fence of fire the units of 
the army's rear seemed in the same position as yes- 
terday. There was no lull in the thunders which 
had begun at daybreak. The last twenty-four hours 
seemed like a month. This artillery duel had become 
an institution. 

But, yes, a closer look showed a change — a little 
change. The bursts of the Japanese shrapnel were 
now carried far to the other side of "Kuropatkin's 
eye," toward the town, and they played continuously 
over a Russian battery in a position farther to the 
rear than any held before. By hand the men of 
Oku's army had dragged all the way from Nanshan, 
where they were captured, these five-inch Canets 
whose bite was worthy of their bark. The artiller- 
ists, who had struggled with them over bad roads, 
had their reward. Now, for the first time in this 
war, except at Port Arthur, the gunners of the vic- 
torious Japanese could stand out of range of the 



LIAOYANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 277 

Russian guns which were their target. There is no joy 
sweeter to an artillerist's heart than that. Then, too, 
in that "corner" of congested hills and congested 
artillery-fire, it was evident that some of the Russian 
guns had fallen back a little; but that might have 
been only to rectify the line. 

The infantry supporting the battery on the ridges 
directly opposite the correspondents' citadel of ob- 
servation, tramped heavily, Russian fashion, into 
the gully and up on to the ridge near us, and looked 
over the top of that and stopped there for a time. 
Past the battery on the bank of the Taitse-ho four 
guns trotted out leisurely in reconnoissance behind 
infantry and cavalry that had gone ahead. They 
were fairly in line with the rear of the Fourth Army. 
After a few shots in our direction, which met with 
no response, they went back, and so did the infantry 
on the ridges in front of the correspondents, without 
even sending us to cover with a volley or two; we 
felt most insignificant and unworthy. 

Now, Kuropatkin in his report tells us that his 
plan was to let Kuroki isolate his army and then 
destroy it in detail. On the morning of the 31st, 
he says, he learned — presumably from this recon- 
noissance — of the broad gap in our lines ; but he was 
being crowded so hard in other directions that he 



278 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

had no troops to spare for the opportunity. The 
daring of Japanese strategy had taken the nature of 
its enemy into account and had reckoned well. By 
his own confession, Kuropatkin had not discovered 
the gap until thirty-six hours after it existed. A 
half-dozen good American scouts would have in- 
formed him soon after sun-up on the 29th, and these 
men would have been worth more to the Russians 
than any half-dozen of their colonels. 

When I first looked out on the plain and saw the 
two armies engaged, I was of the mind to see an 
epochal contest decided in a day or two, as Waterloo 
or Antietam was. The ammunition expended in a 
forenoon was more than that expended in the whole 
battle, of Gettysburg. Long-range weapons and rail- 
ways mean only that the railways have more to 
carry, and, by sparring with guns and rifles while 
the infantry creeps forward, the openings for critical 
assaults develop themselves but slowly and grudg- 
ingly. Five hundred guns in line, with the shrapnel 
of as many breaking over them, doubtless presents 
the most stupendous spectacle ever brought into 
the vista of the human eye. Yet the most magnifi- 
cent storm at sea would scarcely keep the most ardent 
admirer of nature's wonders from losing his sleep. 

Field-glasses that had scarcely left their owners' 



LIAO YANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 279 

eyes on the 30th now had long intervals of rest. We 
were in the presence of a gigantic tug of war, where 
the two teams seemed to hold each other steady, 
with never a flutter of the ribbon to one side or the 
other. The effect of that vast play of force hyp- 
notically kept us in our places. To go nearer was 
to see only one of a thousand parts that I had already 
seen: that I was to see on the morrow; and so I re- 
mained. 

March, the gunner, who yesterday had munched 
his hardtack while he gazed, now told us that the 
sun was much hotter to-day than yesterday — though 
it was not. The very suspense was wearing the 
observer out. We felt at times as if we were listen- 
ing to a ship grinding her way through the ice, with 
the expectation that she would succumb at any 
moment. If Blondin had stood for hours on the 
tight rope over Niagara Falls, I can well understand 
how the spectator, at first spellbound, might turn 
aside to play with a dog at his feet ; or he might even 
go home for luncheon, expecting that Blondin would 
still be there when he returned. 

"Tell me if anything new happens," said March, 
as he sought the shade for his luncheon. "It's only 
gun-fire, anyway." 

What March wanted, what we all wanted, was 



28o WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

bulletins. It is not the fireworks nor the shouting 
but the figures appearing on the transparencies 
which hold stern attention on an election night. 
Here we must watch results reveal themselves, cer- 
tain that any vital change would be as clear to us as 
anger, mirth, or death in pantomime on the stage. 
And little things — little in this great affair — began to 
speak of tendencies, at least. 

Beyond the river, to the north, we saw the break- 
ing of Russian shells on the hills, which told us that 
Kuroki had made his lodgment on the flank, although 
he did not yet threaten the railway. Far out on the 
plain to the southwest of the town we saw the fires 
which told of unexpected pressure there and the 
destruction by the Russians of any possible cover 
for the advance of the Japanese left. In that direc- 
tion, too, we saw the movement of Russian rein- 
forcing columns. Nearer, on the sidings just beyond 
the Russian quarter, the smoke of a dozen locomo- 
tives spoke of departure for the wounded, and, if nec- 
essary, for the vital ammunition which should maim 
more. Liaoyang itself still waited and watched on 
another lease of power for the old master or the en- 
try of the new. The bridges still unoccupied only 
meant that the way was clear when the time came 
to go. 



LIAOYANG— THE ARTILLERY DUEL 281 

There was no diminution in the volume of artillery- 
fire. A second time, almost at the same hour, the 
sky grown ugly purple shed reluctantly the moisture 
which the sun had extracted from earth and stream. 
The drops hissing on hot barrels were at the same 
time cooling to the intent faces of the fighters. The 
flashes were plainer, while the blue curls of the smoke 
of the shrapnel merged with the mist. A second 
time, the sky having yielded its all, the atmosphere 
cleared, as varicolored shadows passed over the sea 
of yellowing corn. 

The Japanese shells had crept still farther past 
^'Kuropatkin's eye." In the "corner" there was 
no question but the Russian infantry had fallen back, 
for the Russian guns were shifting their position to 
the rear. But between the last of the hills and the 
town, all obscured by the high kowliang, were the 
redoubts, the pits with stakes at their bottoms, and 
the barb-wire entanglements of the last line, which 
was still to be taken by assault or commanded in 
flank. 

When, with the gathering of darkness, I left the 
scene my last glimpse was of a battery between the 
*^eye" and a neighboring spur. It was under a veil 
of shrapnel smoke, illuminated by lightnings, which 
quickly, stitch by stitch, the Japanese had woven. 



282 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

"Can they stand that and fire again?" you asked. 
Beneath the mantle of smoke, Hke diamonds on a 
bride's head, the Russian gunners who had kept 
cover during the fusillade flashed their response as 
rapid as the sparks of a parlor match struck on the 
wall. Yet the bursts significantly outnumbered the 
flashes. Something said that the battery would not 
be there at daybreak. 

The Japanese infantry had found the points in 
the wall of human flesh and smokeless powder that 
were weak. They had crowded so close that retreat 
was death, and advance their only salvation. That 
night they broke through with the bayonet. 



XXII 

KUROKI CROSSES THE TAITSE 

We had seen the battle and the field of operations 
as a whole. Now we were to see and feel a part — 
the intimate, trying part— when veterans used to 
victories, locking arms with superior numbers, 
should make the effort of two divisions the universe 
of our hopes and fears for three days of blood and 

heat. 

On the night of August 31st, I rode on in the track 
of the flanking force, which had crossed the unford- 
able Taitse in face of a napping enemy. This was 
a by-road between high hills, where, in the darkness, 
the torches and campfires of the commissariat lighted 
the maze of Japanese carts, Chinese carts, pack- 
ponies, Korean and Chinese coolies, and all the plod- 
ding flesh, human or animal, which could bear or 
draw suppUes. Among the caravan, as I rode for- 
ward, I made out indistinctly the form of a tent 
which I knew as well as I knew my own pony. The 
"boys" had put it up on a stubble field. We had 

for dinner a delicacy that we had been saving for two 

283 



284 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

months with a view to such a time as this — when 
long anticipation is reahzed with the keen appetite 
of sheer physical fatigue. I can taste that can of 
peaches as I write. 

In the morning it was only an hour's trot to the 
river. There I met old friends in an unexpected 
place — the pontoons that we had used at the Yalu. 
They had not come with Nishi from Feng-wang- 
cheng along the old Peking Road ; so they must have 
gone by mountain paths and over mountain passes 
with the Twelfth, which, without ever closing up 
with the frontal force, had gone directly to a lodg- 
ment on the stream which covered Kuropatkin's left. 

Luck is with these pontoons. Thus far they have 
caused the dismissal of two Russian generals; and 
well may the little engineers bail them out and re- 
paint them in the hope of favors to come on other 
streams that lie on the way to Harbin. At the Yalu, 
Zassulitch concluded that the Japanese were going 
to cross at Antung, and awakened to find the bridge 
of his disgrace spanning an unprotected flank. 
Orloff evidently labored under the same fulness of 
theory and lack of scouting practice. His wound at 
Yentai did not save him from public humiliation by 
his Emperor. 

Till we crossed the Taitse the war for the First 



KUROKI CROSSES THE TAITSE 285 

Army had been the march of a pattern plan. What- 
ever the casualties, when night had fallen the day's 
work had been finished according to programme. 
This masterly trick with the pontoons, the nerve that 
had left a gap of five miles in an army's line and 
thrown a wing into the air, was the climax of our 
strategy here. Beyond the Taitse the conflict be- 
came such as painters paint and writers write. On 
a level three miles across and ten miles from east to 
west, parallel with the railroad, the Second Division 
had its position. Its flank was in touch with the 
Twelfth: Inouye's Twelfth that had marched from 
Seoul, that had been first at Ping Yang, first at the 
Yalu, first at Feng-wang-cheng, and now was the 
exposed end of an army of one hundred and fifty 
thousand men. The Imperial Guards were sepa- 
rated from their corps and fighting with the Fourth 
Army in the frontal attack. Once the Russian first 
line was taken, they would close into the gap between 
the main body and the wing and again be in touch 
with the left of the Sendai men. 

The task before us, to the eye comprehending 
only field and slope, was such as more than once 
before had occupied us for only a few hours' time. 
To the left was an irregular mountain, called No. 
131 on the map, which, rising knuclde-like, formed 



286 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

a rampart buttressing the defence of Liaoyang from 
the northeast. Across a narrow gap from its base 
there is a "Httle hill," Hayentai, not more than two 
hundred feet high at its highest point and scarcely 
four hundred yards long, but to many soldiers of both 
armies bigger than Mont Blanc. Across another 
level of a mile or more were two series of ridges, 
which the spectators called Four Finger and Five 
Finger. Their Chinese names, which I have since 
learned, mean nothing to me. I stick to those by 
which we knew them through three days, when every 
burst of rifle-fire and every salvo of shrapnel brought 
us some message of how the hazard was going. 
Through the gaps between the heights we could see 
the villages on the line of the railway which was 
our goal. 

The "little hill" the Russians had not properly 
fortified. It was quite neglected until the battle 
began. Elsewhere, but not here, the Russians had 
cut the kowliang over the approaches to their de- 
fences. Hayentai was bare. It was a target. It 
must be taken. It was hard to take and hard to hold. 
To an approaching army, the kowliang meant what 
darkness does to a torpedo attack. Two weeks later, 
when the kowliang was shocked, you might sit on 
the temple steps, in the village at the base of the hill 



KUROKI CROSSES THE TAITSE 287 

and see a man three miles away as he walked across 
the plain. On September ist he might have crept 
up to within fifty yards and had the '^drop'' on you 
before you had a glimpse of him. 

To little men with mobile nether limbs and the 
cunning of the fox, the kowliang speaks a sympa- 
thetic language. There were also patches of low 
millet, such as we see at home; but the army was 
especially solicitous in avoiding them. Hereafter 
the Chinese may plant that kind, for it has a good 
joss and is not trampled down in war time. The 
Russians on the 'kittle hill" were in the position of 
a blind man shooting down the street. They knew 
that the Japanese were coming, but they did not 
know just where. They shot into the kowliang 
miscellaneously, and the thick mass of stalks meas- 
urably shortened the range of their bullets. 

In one of our recent naval manoeuvres at home, a 
black turret bounced porpoise-like out of the water 
near a battleship, and a saucy ensign signaled: "I 
have torpedoed you." General Orloff could sym- 
pathize with the captain of that battleship. The 
morning of September ist revealed the thirty-six 
guns of the Second Division in a set, close line within 
four thousand yards' range of the 'kittle hill." The 
gunners had worked all night, as they had for the 



288 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

last five nights; and they were to fight all day, as 
they had for the last five days. Only by working 
all night would they have the opportunity to fight 
all day. The inferior range made it necessary 
that they bring their guns close to the enemy. Here 
was not the first time they had so taken advantage 
of position as to force any Russian gun which could 
reach them by direct fire to come within range. 

That we were fighting on the plain; that now we 
were having a new experience and new methods, 
I realized rather pathetically when a Chinese coolie 
at the rear of the regiment, which I followed across 
the pontoon, was singled out by the nature of his 
burden. He had a characterless armful of red and 
white cloth and wood. I recognized the little flags 
which, on many stubborn hillsides, had marked the 
progress of storming parties. They were made out 
of common cotton and their staffs were the sticks 
to hand at the time. These souvenirs of reality 
had no touch of the gallery play of the silken regi- 
mental standard which is blessed with the tears 
and prayers of thousands at home; they had simply 
the clinging fondness of personal association. 

Like an old coat, they were half doubtfully brought 
along. If the advance squads waved them now, 
they were quite as likely to be seen by the Russian 



KUROKI CROSSES THE TAITSE 289 

as the Japanese general. The sudden change of 
our world of action from mountains to level made 
them as useless as a mosquito net in midocean. The 
generals must henceforth keep touch with their 
commands by wire and messenger; the units must 
keep touch, one with the other, by feeling rather 
than by sight — by the genius of military homogeneity. 
Yes, we must do that; and we must get the "little 
hill," that wart on the nose of our landscape. Once 
it was ours, we had the leverage to move by flank 
upon the heights to the right and left. 

Confidently the regiments, the battalions, the com- 
panies, deployed into the kowliang; as confidently 
as if no mere storm of bullets could make a veteran 
army break an engagement to cut off Kuropatkin's 
retreat. If some magic reaper could have suddenly 
laid the kowliang low, a feast of targets would have 
been offered to the Russian gunners' eyes. But all 
that was visible was the sea of ripening tassels 
stretching across the breadth of the plain to heights 
that screened the pontoon. The Russian gunners 
knew that there was cannon food here, and they cast 
their shells on a hundred- to-one chance. From high 
ground, watching the shrapnel being thrown over the 
field, we could tell when they were hot and when 
they were cold. As a miller will weep over burning 



290 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

grain, so an artillerist might well weep at that pitiful 
waste of shell-fire. 

The Russian battery commander stays in his 
battery, his sight obscured by the smoke and dust; 
his perspective affected by the action immediately 
around him. This is one of the Russian prejudices. 
Every army has its prejudices, the product of national 
mind and habit, which are against the best approved 
thought of its own specialists, who are helpless to 
overcome them. The Japanese, conning the text- 
books of the world, finding all modern progress new, 
are without prejudices ; and the text-book way for a 
battery commander, though he does not seem so 
gallant for picture purposes and risks his life even 
more, is to stand at one side of the battery, where he 
can keep his eye out for the target and for the effect 
of his shells. 

For two days I watched a Japanese battalion which 
lay in close order behind a slight rise. Half a dozen 
times the Russian guns seemed to have found it, 
and curls of smoke broke at the right angle of height 
and distance. There were flutters in the mass of 
khaki, like that of the kowliang in a breeze; the 
movement to assist the wounded. But the battalion 
gave no such corroboration of Russian suspicion of 
its presence as to deploy. It was needed where it 



KUROKI CROSSES THE TAITSE 291 

was; there was no better cover to be had. Stoically 
it held on. Directly the Russian, all oblivious of 
his fortune, turned the stream elsewhere, evidently 
determined, like a gardener with a hose, to wet all 
the ground impartially. 

But the Russians did not overlook our batteries. 
These were pounded steadily. If Russian practice 
had been good they would have been silenced. As 
it was, their answer to the poor, indirect fire which 
they could not reach was a killing, direct fire that 
poured shrapnel into the village at the base of 
Hayentai and dug holes in the crest with common 
shell. If a Russian gun had tried to swing into po- 
sition on the crest of the ^'little hill" it would literally 
have been blown off. The "little hill" was no place 
for guns. It was no place even for infantry to tarry 
long after taking it by storm, as later events proved. 
We caught glimpses of Russian infantry there early 
in the fight, but to remain was simply to set them- 
selves up like ninepins before a skilful bowler. 

Their departure did not mean that the hill was 
ours. Left and right they could bring fire on any 
force that tried to storm it. Rush by rush, however, 
our troops made their way through the kowliang. 
At nightfall we were in the village at the base of 
Hayentai. As the sun went down^ our shells were 



292 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

still bursting on the crest, and the Russian shells 
were bursting over our guns and over the field at 
random. From the direction of Liaoyang we had 
heard no sound of firing all day. The tired Russians 
there were settling themselves in their second line 
of defence, and the Japanese bringing forward their 
artillery so that it should command the town. When 
I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, Hayentai was 
outlined by flashes of rifle-fire. In the pale moon- 
light the Japanese crept out of the little village, and 
foot by foot, in face of the flashes, with bayonet in 
hand, in overwhelming numbers at 2 A. m. they 
swept over the crest and bore the enemy back. 

Yet there was no rest for them. They had to 
make their squatters' rights good; to improve their 
holdings instantly. More Russian guns and more 
Russian infantry had come up over night. As the 
Russian line before Liaoyang contracted, it yielded 
spare divisions for the protection of the flank. With 
the first streaks of dawn a mist of shrapnel smoke 
hung over the ^'little hill." The work of the spade 
in the blood-moist earth came after the work of the 
bayonet in the flesh. Like prairie dogs, the little 
men who were to hold Hayentai for the long day 
before them burrowed for their lives. While a few 
on the crest watched from cover there, the others 



KUROKI CROSSES THE TAITSE 293 

dug deeper in their holes with the scream of shrap- 
nel in their ears. If the infantry of the enemy came, 
then the enemy's guns must abate their fire as the 
charge approached and the bombproofs would empty 
their guests over the crest to meet the onslaught. 
For the value of the '4ittle hill" was not "in firing 
from it, but in having the other fellow off it." 



XXIII 

THE IMPORTANT ^' LITTLE HILL " 

A SECOND bridge was built later in a more con- 
venient place, saving the transport carts a mile or 
more. The lodgment for the pontoons was made in 
the dip between two heights. That to the north, 
Kwantun, was once crowned by a fortress or a castle 
of some kind, built, possibly, before the Coliseum. 
The thick, crumbling wall of massive stones, thirty 
feet high in places, still remains. 

In this modern battle the only part that Kwantun 
played was to furnish shade to the staffs the attaches 
and the correspondents. On the slope at one side, 
General Kuroki could see the whole length of the 
positions which his forces were assailing. The situ- 
ation of our corps was one to please the fancy of 
" Stonewall " Jackson or Havelock. • We had a river 
at our backs which guns and foot must cross in case 
of retreat. We had a division quite in the air — but 
Inouye, who had come all the way from Seoul and 
was no novice in mountain work, commanded that 

division. 

294 



THE IMPORTANT "LITTLE HILL" 295 

Between us and the main bodies of Nodzu and Oku 
there was a five-mile march at the shortest, over a 
road gorged with transportation. Always you must 
bear this gap in mind in order to realize the strategy 
of Liaoyang. When Kuroki started, there was no 
certainty that the Second and Fourth Armies could 
take the Russian frontal position. Had Kuropatkin 
been able to break through the gap no assistance 
could have come to us. 

On the reverse side of the hill of Kwantun, the 
telegraphers and the field telephone men were 
always busy bringing news from our divisions, our 
brigades, our regiments, our batteries and, most 
important of all, from Oyama. Upon the span of 
wire through the cornfields depended the staff 
knowledge of the position of our own corps and all 
the work of other corps which affected our own. 
When the key should sound for Grand Headquarters 
and no answer come, the position would be that of a 
battleship in evolution whose rudder had refused to 
respond. If the telegraph commands a mobility of 
organization on a large scale impossible in Napoleon's 
time, no chief of staff can ever quite forget that the 
execution of his plans hangs by a thin thread of 
copper. 

No crime in the eyes of justice in battle can equal 



296 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

that of cutting a wire. The penalty is instant death 
in all armies. We had an illustration of this on 
the I St. Collins was a little distance behind the 
staff when he saw one of the telegraph men running 
after a Chinese, who squealed in terror as he fled. 
The telegraph man caught the culprit by the pigtail 
and brought him to his knees. Fatalistically ac- 
cepting the inevitable, the Chinese seemed to lower 
his head for the process. With the Japanese sword 
which he carried, the telegraph man severed it from 
the body. There was damning evidence enough — 
a pair of wire cutters and bits of Japanese wire found 
on the person. "Rather abrupt," you may say. But 
cutting a wire may change the fate of a battle or 
mean the loss of thousands of lives. 

The staff did not seem to work hard. When it 
does we shall be worried about the fate of our corps. 
General Kuroki spent most of his time in the shade. 
If his people raise a statue to him I hope that 
he will not be riding a prancing horse and swinging 
his sword; for he never rode a prancing horse and 
never used his sword. To my recollection, I never 
saw him make any gesture except to salute. The 
sculptor had best make him squatting and looking 
at a map while he listens to his staff; and always 
all of his staff except the younger men (the gallopers) 




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THE IMPORTANT " LITTLE HILL" 297 

were at his side. He could call for information or 
suggestions as quickly as the head of a great business 
house who has a row of push buttons on his desk. 

General Fuji, the chief, fell asleep when the battle 
was hottest on the 2d. He had spent most of the 
night planning for that day. He could not make 
the work of our infantry any easier or make the 
fire of our guns any more accurate by watching 
them; he could hear much better than he could see, 
getting over the wire every detail of the movement 
of each regiment and battalion as each general and 
colonel and major saw it. When he was wanted 
he could be wakened. Until he was, according to 
the scientific view, he served his country best by 
resting. 

If you descended the slope into that field of 
kowliang which hid our soldiers, you found your- 
self in the situation of a botanist who is studying 
a single flower instead of one who observes a land- 
scape. You found blood and men and ripening 
grain. The wounded were in the farmhouses; the 
dead were being burned by weary details. Doctors, 
with their eyelids drooping, were almost too tired to 
be polite. The heat was the steady heat of the 
season when the milk of the corn is turning to flour. 
The rows between the kowliang were like the closed 



298 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

cabin of a catboat which rests on a glassy surface in 
a midday sun. Overhead the tassels now and then 
would move a little with a milky warm but relatively 
cool breeze, as tantalizingly out of reach as heaven 
itself. To lift your head was to be taught humility 
by the bullets. 

As the line crept forward there were only stalks 
ahead of it and stalks behind it, and the guide of 
its advance was the enemy's fire. The guns roared 
like thunder — an infantryman could count the re- 
ports from friendly mouths as an offset to the 
shrapnel bursts that clipped through the kowliang 
like hail. Details went and came with water, water, 
water — a Chinese well, a ditch, anything that was 
wet. Sanitary regulations passed into limbo in the 
supreme hour of a great battle. The sufferers must 
drink and a canteen full seemed only a swallow. 
If I appear to indulge in figures of speech, I ask you 
to take three days to crawl three miles through a 
Kansas cornfield in August, being shot at all the 
time. When you have done that on eight sen a day, 
probably you will think that the land conquered be- 
longs to you, regardless of title-deeds. 

On the night of the ist, Collins and I had slept on 
some kowliang stalks on the slope occupied by the 
staff during the day. We awoke when the flashes of 



THE IMPORTANT " LITTLE HILL " 299 

Russian shrapnel began playing over the patriotic 
heads of the little men who had taken Hayentai from 
the big men overnight. Drowsily we rolled up our 
blankets, with the comprehension, first, that we had 
horses to feed, then, that the artillery-fire was going 
on to-day as it had yesterday, and then that we were 
hungry, with no breakfast in sight. Probably the 
artillery-fire would go on forever; probably there 
were no soft beds and no square meals anywhere 
in the world since we had returned to chaotic be- 
ginnings. We recalled, however, that a river flowed 
not far away on this summer morning. Presently 
there was no war; there were only two insanely 
happy men bathing themselves and their horses. 
As we dressed, Collins broke into speech: 

"What I would hke," he said, "would be, first, 
some grapes all dewy off the ice; then " 

But I did not permit him to go any further. 

We had a little rice and some coffee. He boiled 
the rice and I made the coffee, and I assure you we 
did not overtax our stomachs. 

^'And after I had topped off with ice-cream," 
said Collins, reminiscently, "I think I'd go to sleep, 
with orders not to wake me, ever." 

We had something that tasted as well to us as 
ice-cream to the average diner in town. You may 



300 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

trust soldiers to find a spring, if there is one. In 
the kowliang not far from Kwantun a spring bub- 
bled out of the ploughed earth; bubbled ceaselessly, 
coolly, from the filter of sandy loam, laughing typhoid 
to scorn. When I first looked at it I remember 
wondering how such cool water could come out of a 
cornfield on such a hot day. If a linen cloth and 
spotless napkins and Collins' s idea of a breakfast 
had materialized at my elbow on opening my eyes 
after a night on the ground, I could not have been 
much happier than I was to have my turn among 
the " transporters" at this fountain of joy. You found 
bottom in the region of your ankles and you felt each 
swallow trickle down till you were full to the throat. 
There had been no rest for most of our gunners. 
They had reached a situation where the general 
might say: ^^ Battery Number Two may get the best 
cover it can from shrapnel and sleep for an hour." 
Our guns had become used to moving overnight. 
Most of them were now in a new position to the 
right of Hayentai, where they were in range of the 
Russian positions of yesterday, at all events. The 
possession of Hayentai gave us no place for guns or 
infantry; but it meant, I repeat, that we could swing 
into the gap to the northeast of Hayentai and get 
a purchase in flank on Four Finger and Five Finger. 



THE IMPORTANT ''LITTLE HILL" 301 

This we were doing. Optimism ran high for the 
moment, among the spectators, at least. They had 
been so accustomed to seeing any Japanese pro- 
gramme carried out that many thought that we were 
going to cut the railroad and get behind Kuropatkin. 
In the first place, we do not know that Kuroki ever 
had any programme of the sort ; in the second place, 
there was the remark that March had made on the 
30th, when we realized the magnitude of the Rus- 
sian forces: 

"Two or three divisions (with a river separating 
them from their main body) will not stay long behind 
an army of twelve or fifteen divisions which want to 
break through in retreat." 

We knew, then, as well as we knew six days later 
that Kuropatkin, if he were not a gigantic blunderer, 
could make his retreat good when he was ready. 
The stake for which we might hope was the capture 
or the annihilation of a division or less of the rear- 
guard. 

The first of the rambling ridges of Four Finger 
and Five Finger was already ours. The Twelfth 
had passed out of the kowliang on to the slopes. 
Plainer than the men, we could see the ammunition 
ponies emerge from the fields like serpents from the 
sea and go into the cover of gullies. The first main 



302 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

ridge had been taken with a rush. Our advance 
had passed on over the crest, while our reserves 
were khaki patches on the rocks. Between two 
of the fingers we could see a saddle-like plateau 
between heights beyond. On this were two most 
persistent Russian guns, which were pounding our 
infantry whenever the shrapnel from the Twelfth 
gave them a clear air for seeing. Half a dozen 
times I thought that at last the two had given up, 
and flash — flash, their muzzles would signify their 
presence. Bang — bang — bang, the reply of the 
Japanese, seemed in words: ^^Oh, you're still 
there, are you ? Very well ! Here's another present ! " 
And the Russians would be quiet for three or four 
minutes, as if trying to divert suspicion before they 
spoke again. 

At noon there was no longer any doubt; the two 
guns had gone. Now the Twelfth began its assault. 
To its assistance had come the Osaka mixed brigade, 
fresh from Japan. Though the Russian guns were 
away, the Russian infantry apparently still held the 
*' saddle." Our guns swinging out into the gap di- 
rected their fire to the protection of our advance. 
Thus far, indeed, we were going well. It was said 
when we possessed the "saddle" on Four Finger our 
guns would be in range of the railroad. But later 



THE IMPORTANT "LITTLE HILL" 303 

the spectators learned that they had mistaken a 
new branch running to the coal mines of Yentai, not 
on our maps, for the main line. 

As for Hayentai, the Russians had many more 
guns in that direction than yesterday. We judged 
that some might have been brought off as the line 
before Liaoyang narrowed with its retreat. The 
Russian batteries realized that the Japanese were not 
on the crest of the ^'little hill," and throughout the 
day they dropped shells on the slopes where our 
infantry burrowed and also in the village below. 
A dozen would burst in rapid succession; always 
there were enough to keep the new masters from 
cooking their rice or sending details for anything 
but water. Hayentai was the rock splitting the 
stream of our advance. We had to go around it. 
Through the kowliang to the southwest our infan- 
try swept toward the mountainous height (known on 
the map as No. 131) which commanded Liaoyang 
from the northeast. If the Twelfth were swung in 
toward Liaoyang, then it seemed that No. 131 must 
fall of its own weight. Once ours, with the ridges 
behind it also ours, we had a commanding gun 
position for striking the retreat. 

The staff evidently wanted No. 131 immediately, 
as well as Four Finger and Five Finger. The Im- 



304 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

perial Guards were still on the other side of the 
Taitse. They were sent forward in demonstration 
on the river bottom toward No. 131 ; and on the river 
bottom they lay for hours. The gravel under their 
bodies was as hot as a stove lid. The shrapnel 
scattered it as the first drops of a shower do the dust 
of the road. But the Guards were too tired to mind 
that. They felt as if they had been fighting and 
marching since the world began ; and they fell asleep, 
despite death and heat. 

Meanwhile, the real charge broke out of the 
kowliang to the southeast of the "little hill." It 
ran around the base of a slope and, dodging and 
dashing by rushes, swept upward, with dead and 
wounded in its track. If the Russians in the trench 
above had retreated often, they must have had some 
satisfaction. They came out of their cover and, 
silhouetting themselves against the sky, fired at will, 
patronizingly. Our men found what protection they 
could and waited for the cover of night. 

Darkness fell with the Russians still in possession 
of No. 131 and the Guards still lying on the bed of 
the stream. We observers with the First Army 
could see only the work of our corps; Liaoyang was 
hidden from us. But gun-fire in that direction told 
of action there. At one time we heard that the 



THE IMPORTANT " LITTLE HILL " 305 

Russians were already away; again that the town 
was ours whenever we would take it. There was 
no question that in front of the First the enemy was 
reinforcing rapidly with guns and men. The offi- 
cer who had lost Hayentai on the night of the ist 
had doubtless told his superior that he could hold 
it against any odds. For you can place only a 
certain number of men within a given length of 
trench, and he had ample forces. He was right in 
theory, but wrong in practice against the Japanese. 
Liaoyang brought a new feature into modern war- 
fare — the night attack. The Russian officer in 
command of the ^'little hill" could not help himself. 
He was in the position of the resident of Johnstown 
who was correct in thinking that his drainage system 
was all right until the flood came. 

When the bloody remnant of his force examined 
itself in the daylight in the kowliang, where it had 
groped for cover, its members might well have sub- 
scribed to the popular impression in Russia that the 
Japanese is a poisonous insect that crawls into the 
soldier's boots and under his clothing and stings him 
to death. One thing we have noted, stage by stage 
from the Yalu, and that is that the Russian is learn- 
ing, as the British learned in South Africa. He is 
taking notes out of the Japanese book and applying 



3o6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

them as far as the limited intelligence of the average 
moujik will permit; and the moujik who has been 
under fire several times has had a most enlivening 
if not liberal education. 

So the enemy, in turn, undertook a night attack. 
Again the shrapnel bursts flashed over Hayentai 
after the sun went down, while the rifles blazed out 
from the crest which had been a dead gray against 
the sky during the day. Sleeping on a rocky bed 
near the castle of Kwantun we saw the spectacle as 
we had seen it the night before. A Siberian regiment 
and a regiment fresh from Russia — the old to steady 
the new under the first staggering blast and the 
new bringing ingenuous faith in his invincibility — 
came with drums — drums in the night! There was 
no artifice. The heavy Slav, like some mad giant, 
rushed upon skill with the rage of brute force. A 
torrent of men swept up Hayentai. They ingulfed 
the Japanese who were there as the Japanese had 
ingulfed the Russians the night before. Then the 
fight in the dark began. The Japanese driven 
back on their reserve in the village reformed. Shell- 
fire no longer shook their nerves or broke their ranks. 
The batteries of neither side might fire in the dark 
without firing into their own men. Hayentai was 
a debris-strewn, blood-strewn, shell-torn, open arena 



THE IMPORTANT ''LITTLE HILL" 307 

for men and rifles — and particularly for the bayonets 
on the ends of the rifles. Creeping upward like cats, 
the little men put their steel in the big men and 
swamped the Russian advance before its reserves 
could be brought into action. In the morning the 
mist of shrapnel charging over the crest was still 
Russian,. which told us that the Japanese still held 
that "little hill" as vital to either side as a bridge 
to a roadstead. 



XXIV 

KUROPATKIN RETREATS 

On the morning of September 3d, when the staff 
returned to Kwantun from its quarters in a little 
village nearby, we were in a situation where even 
if we could force our way we might risk going little 
farther. We heard no word of Liaoyang except 
that the Japanese had not yet entered the town, and 
we looked over the now familiar position upon the 
scattering gun-fire of line watching line grimly and 
jealously. 

In the afternoon I rode back over the road by 

which the Second Division had come after its feint 

against the Russian left wing on the southern bank 

of the Taitse. On the river sands by the second 

bridge was a concourse of pack animals safely out of 

range of the Russian guns. Otherwise, on the levels 

there was no transportation to be in the way of the 

retreat of our artillery and trains, if the worst came. 

Once in the hills, you found the valley gorged. 

Here was the servants' hall, the pantry, the storeroom, 

the stokehole of the army, which every breathing 

308 



KUROPATKIN RETREATS 3^9 

man on the fighting line thought of as a heavenly 
thing that was ^'coming up" when the battle was 
over. On the backs of cows as well as of Korean 
coolies were the little trunks with the stated sixty- 
two pounds of comforts that each Japanese officer is 
allowed. They had come from Chenampo and Seoul 
and had never before been separated so long from 

their owners. 

Its transportation is the one unshipshape looking 
thing about the Japanese army. The litde two- 
wheeled carts and the pack-ponies from the homeland 
seem poured out of the same mould as the regi- 
ments and the divisions and the generals. But the 
supplementary commissariat is of the East eastern. 
Neither officers nor privates of the transport corps 
(bringing order out of a chaos of mules, donkeys, 
cows, and carts, and a babel of moos, squeals, brays, 
and coolies' shouts) had any glory out of these great 
days in their country's history. They heard the 
distant rumble of guns, while they waited on the 
orders which might mean victory or defeat. 

Our own cart was where we had left it. From 
a hill nearby Liaoyang was visible, and I could see 
in the gathering dusk the positions of the forces. 
The town was no longer a patch of silence on the 
plain. It lay between two hells. On one side, on 



3IO WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

the plain, were the Japanese batteries; and on the 
other, across the river, were the Russian. You 
marked their positions as you would a line of gas-jets. 
The air was full of the lightning of shrapnel bursts. 
I was witnessing the last act in the drama. Only a 
rearguard remained yet to cross the bridges and then 
destroy them. 

The Second and Fourth Armies were held back by 
a stream which could be forded by only a few men 
at a time in a few places. Kuropatkin's whole force 
of two hundred thousand was on the same side of 
the Taitse as the First Army. Facing the line of 
the enemy's retreat, Kuroki must be a spectator 
of its passing. His two divisions and his extra bri- 
gade were before six or seven times their number. 
Fresh reserves were marching in from Mukden and 
the divisions that had fought Oku and Nodzu were 
crowding against our left. Though the onlookers 
could not see the Russian columns, we realized the 
pressure of their mass as you realize by the draught 
that the door of a darkened room has been opened. 
There was imminent danger of the Twelfth being 
enveloped. Kuroki sent for the Guards to cross the 
river in reinforcement. They came — as many of 
them as had the strength. Those who had not fell 
asleep in their tracks, with hot stones for pillows. 










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KUROPATKIN RETREATS 311 

At this critical juncture our communication with 
the main army was cut. We were isolated — a fair 
prize, indeed, for Kuropatkin's divisions if he real- 
ized his opportunity. Probably he did realize it and 
probably his soldiers were as tired as ours. The 
staff which I had watched on many fields for the 
first time gave the order to retreat. But no sooner 
were the orders for the Twelfth to fall back received 
over the wires than communication with Grand 
Headquarters was resumed and the pressure from 
the Russians ceased. 

The brave word followed the cautious word to 
the end of the corps. That long line of carts and 
coolies started out of the hills to close up with the 
force that it fed. The order for pursuit was easily 
given. Reaction gripping our weary force prevented 
its accomplishment. No stimulant of Imperial am- 
bition or clan loyalty, no ancestral faith could put 
more strength into the legs of this army. 

After the staff had held its last conference for the 
day, General Kuroki stepped a little to one side and, 
squatting, Japanese fashion, sat silently looking out 
toward his lines. It was the first time that the 
Russians had stopped him. That samurai face, 
with its high cheek-bones and its square jaw, was 
as enigmatical as ever. After some minutes he 



312 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

arose and walked rather wearily by himself down 
the slope. He was not to receive the glory from 
this action that he had from others; but in the 
comparative tribute of military praise which he and 
his corps deserved, the flanking movement across 
the Taitse was a master-stroke of nerve and execu- 
tion and the Yalu was a text-book manoeuvre. 

Vaguely, the army comprehended that it had won 
a victory. Definitely, it realized only that it had 
won the right to rest. The observer, with all re- 
strictions removed, on the morning of the 4th hur- 
ried to Hayentai through the paths in the kowliang 
that the ammunition ponies had made. Mounds of 
earth with ideograph posts surmounting them did 
not cover all the Japanese that had fallen in the 
fight for the "little hill." Many more were being 
burned on the Japanese side of the slope. 

On the Russian side, the Russian dead were being 
dragged to trenches. Looking west from the sum- 
mit, Hayentai descends to level fields, which, a 
little to the right, are cut by a sunken path that 
carries away the heavy rains of summer. This had 
given the Russians cover for their assault. This 
had called to them in their panic, when the Japanese 
forced them to flee. Here the faces of the dead were 
upturned like the faces of passengers coming up a 



KUROPATKIN RETREATS 313 

gangway and looking aloft to the people on the next 
deck. 

As a hog roots up the turf for nuts, so the Japan- 
ese common shells had ploughed the earth. Brass 
cartridge-cases, shrapnel bullets, bits of "first-aid" 
bandages and bits of Russian brown bread and 
buttons and clothing overspread the position. In 
a pile was such of the harvest of victory as was 
worth collecting. Russian and Japanese pannikins, 
punctured by rifle-fire and torn by shrapnel, and 
Russian and Japanese caps, slashed by bayonets, 
were thrown together. 

I picked up a number of cartridges which bullets 
had struck. There was a bayonet that a bullet had 
bent into a triangle; there were rifle butts that 
had been shattered by shells into kindling wood. 
The most pathetic of all were the little blue-bound 
books which every Russian soldier carries. In these 
are entered his name, the time of his enlistment and 
other facts for identification. On more than one the 
last entry was made by a bullet and the ink it used 
was blood. The four drums were, in a sense, pa- 
thetic, too. Their heads were in ribbons. 

In this age of high organization, some oflicers 
who sit in routine facing rows of pigeon-holes will 
tell you that war is entirely made with brains nowa- 



314 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

days. All such should have seen Hayentai. There 
they would have learned that the taking of criti- 
cal points which are essential to academic plans 
still depends upon brute butchery or brute courage. 
The visitor would have slipped in blood instead of 
dew. Like round figures on a carpet, the clots 
were set off on the earth where the grass was matted 
and worn away by struggle. It needed mincing 
steps to touch every one it you walked in a straight 
line. In a dozen places I saw red paths where 
wounded men had dragged themselves away into the 
kowliang. Following one of these, I came to the 
coagulation which told the story of the death agony. 

The marvellous thing was that, at one period of the 
struggle, if a wounded man could only take himself 
ten feet to the rear, he was safe. Where the rounding 
crest dipped on either side, twenty feet apart, for a 
time the Russian and the Japanese lines had lain in 
the dark firing at the flashes of each others' rifles. 
Slipping down the hillside, with the bullets whistling 
overhead like a gale through the rigging, you were 
as much out of the danger zone temporarily as if you 
had been in Mukden. The positions were clearly 
marked by the systematic arrangement of the blood- 
clots. 

Was not there ugly work? Was quarter always 



KUROPATKIN RETREATS 315 

given? I have been asked. My answer is that all 
was ugly work. Any one who does not palliate it, 
in order to be consistent, must let a burglar in his 
own house shoot at him without firing in response. 
In such a situation, soldiers are not waiting on injunc- 
tions from a court to restrain the enemy's violence. 
Their articulations become less like human speech 
than like savage cries. They are the ghosts of the 
individuals who line up on parade; ghosts trying 
to fight their way out of hell. The big man thrust 
at every little man, and the little man thrust at 
every big man; and the big man used his bayonet 
in powerful lunges as the bull does his horns; the 
little man as a panther uses his claws. The Japanese 
officers, disregarding the sword of Europe — that de- 
cadent product of social functions — carried their 
samurai blades, which are made for killing. 

When I visited the military school in Tokio in 
1 901, as I watched the cadets fencing according to 
Japanese fashion, I remarked: "That must be splen- 
did training for the eye, and grand exercise." 

"And extremely useful," an officer replied. 

It was about this time that Herr Bloch got his 
name frequently printed in all the papers on account 
of his book, which held that modern arms of precision 
would not allow armies to approach each other. 



3i6 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

And Hayentai and Chusan were only three years 
away. 

The prostrate man might still be living, and he 
might still reach the bowels of an adversary with a 
thrust. Discrimination might be as fatal to yourself 
as throwing your oar overboard in a rapid. Men 
were shot into eternity and slashed into eternity; 
perhaps some were scared into eternity. But these 
were not the veterans. I spoke with one of the vet- 
erans, a Sendai man. 

^^You want to use your bayonet with your arms, 
not your body." (He spoke as a cook would say: 
"The whites of two eggs well beaten," etc.) "The 
Russky uses his bayonet with his body. He sticks 
his head down and rushes at you. If he catches 
you, you are spitted for good. He is such a big 
fellow that he lifts you fairly off your feet. If you 
are quick on your legs, though, you can step to one 
side, and then you have him ; the only way with little 
men with short arms is to get in close. 

"The first time I went into a night attack I kept 
thinking of all that my officer told me. I felt like 
I did when I went in as a recruit, and the surgeon 
felt me all over." 

"Stage fright," I suggested. 

But a country boy from Sendai, though he had 



KUROPATKIN RETREATS 317 

studied his English primer well, and tried to improve 
himself so as to rise in the world, did not understand 
that. At least, I did not think he did, by the opera- 
tion of his Japanese smile. 

"The first time I struck a Russian I could feel 
ray bayonet grate on his bone," he went on. "I 
did not think of it at the time, but when I thought 
of it afterward it seemed very awful. I had seen 
him coming like a big black shadow, and I had just 
time to dodge, and I felt his bayonet go by my 
cheek like a razor does over your face. I pulled my 
bayonet out and sunk it in his neck before he had 
time to strike me. If I had not killed him he would 
have killed me. It is that way always. Night be- 
fore last, I " 

He told me many other things, this intelligent 
private. Among them was how it happened that 
frequently he forgot to fire when firing would have 
been much wiser. Many who have died from bay- 
onet thrusts have had cartridges still in their rifle 
chambers. When a man comes to close quarters he 
seems instinctively to grapple. He reverts from sci- 
ence to nature, and nature's method. 



XXV 

AFTERMATH 

Within sight of the horrors of Hayentai I saw a 
picture of perfect happiness and sanitary peace. It 
was a Japanese soldier having his first bath for two 
weeks. His head just showed above a big Chinese 
earthen jar, filled with water hotter than any Euro- 
pean could bear. His clothes were hung on some 
poles nearby to dry. It was no polite Japanese 
smile, but a boyish, gloating, open, guileless smile 
that overspread his face. With many of his com- 
rades of the Second Division, he had eaten his rice 
unboiled when fires in sight of the enemy were pro- 
hibited. After he was clean he was to have just as 
good a dinner as he would have at his home in Sendai. 
Though the Emperor works his troops hard, though 
he can afford to pay them little, he feeds them well. 

When the army had slept, it straightened out its 

stiff limbs and rubbed its eyes. Had this orgy of 

continuous fighting over the hills under the hot sun 

actually taken place or had we dreamed it? In 

proof of the reality, there was the old pagoda tower 

318 



AFTERMATH 319 

of Liaoyang cutting the blue sky in one direction, 
while the range through which we had passed was 
banked against it in another. We were on the plain 
at last. The plain had been our goal. Now that 
we had it we were beginning to appreciate its mean- 
ing. Already Kuroki's men might well wish that 
they were back again in camp in the mountains, 
where there were springs and clear streams. Here 
the drainage of the villages lay foul on the levels; 
the only water was from tainted native wells. That 
chill even now noticeable at night was a harbinger 
of the cold northern winter, when frost would kill 
many of the germ.s which had flourished in summer. 
But another summer was coming, and the soldiers 
who survived must fight that summer through on 
these monotonous levels which, with the concentra- 
tion of two vast forces, may breed pestilences more 
deadly than shrapnel and bullets. 

After the long and deep sleep came washing day 
and cleaning day. Rifle barrels as well as yellow 
faces shone again. The weary gunners stripped the 
mud from the gun wheels and groomed their pet 
pieces of steel. Oflicers examined the rifling to see 
how much it had been worn ; drivers examined 
the galls on their horses to see how serious they 
were ; infantrymen found coats and trousers torn 



320 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

and brought forth their needles. In fact, the whole 
army took account of itself, looking in the mirror 
questioningly, as a man does after a long debauch. 
The stragglers who had fallen in their tracks came 
wearily in. They had your deepest sympathy; for 
they seemed to feel as if they had done a most shame- 
ful thing. I did not notice one who had lost any of 
his kit. In such a test of endurance the surgeon's 
certificate that passes a recruit is little more than 
superficial. The quality of endurance is born in 
some men and not in others. No physical exam- 
ination can identify its possessors. That soldier who 
smiled from his bath (already fit for battle and 
march) looked no stronger than those who had fallen 
on the road. When I asked him what he thought 
of the battle he said: '^They were a little obstinate 
this time, but they had to go." He had never known 
defeat, this little man; he had never been the one 
who was driven; rather, he was the one who did the 
driving. 

After the cleaning and the washing, Nippon 
Denji walked over the positions which he had won, 
satisfying his simple curiosity as he would at the 
booths of a fair. He identified the place where his 
comrade had fallen; he placed a sprig of green on 
his comrade's grave; then he wrote all about it to 



AFTERMATH 321 

the folks at home. Then he took another bath and 
slept again. I think that he wondered himself how 
it was that he should be out of the sound of bullets 
and shell-fire. For nothing was so impressive after 
the battle as the silence of that great plain. Your 
mind and your body, as well as your ears, had the 
feeling which anyone will recognize who has been for 
four or five days continuously on a train and finds 
himself in a quiet room in a country house for a 
night's rest. 

From a point as far north as Yentai, and as far 
south as Chusan, over all the space of fifteen miles 
or more in breadth where the battle had raged, was the 
quiet of a ballroom the morning after the ball. It 
was the peace of exhaustion. The one hundred and 
fifty thousand soldiers who had strained nerve and 
muscle and used the most powerful implements of 
destruction which mechanics and science have de- 
vised for the slaughter of an army set against them, 
were presently as far from thoughts of killing as 
their mothers and sweethearts at home. Not one 
out of five of them would see the provincial capital 
that had given the battle its name and puzzled the 
tongues of the world to pronounce. The First Army 
was already on the other side of the Taitse, with 
their faces turned northward. The left wing of the 



322 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

Fourth Army and the right wing of the Second Army 
were in occupation of Liaoyang. 

Riding in from Kuroki's headquarters on the 
morning of the 6th, I found the engineers already 
bridging the river opposite the native city, which is 
a typical Manchurian town. It stands to the east 
of the old pagoda tower which is at the edge of 
the Russian settlement. Its massive walls had been 
breached in places by the Russians to facilitate their 
retreat. The native population paid dearly in cas- 
ualties for the municipal distinction of having two 
unwelcome hosts quarrel in its suburbs. As the 
Russian rearguard fought its way out, bullets and 
shells did not discriminate between neutral and bel- 
ligerent. Over a thousand Chinese were killed and 
wounded. They were killed and wounded with- 
out gain. That is the sad thing from the Chinese 
point of view. Death they do not mind if it pays. 
Their luck throughout the war hitherto had become 
proverbial with both armies. No one knows quicker 
which way the battle is going. On the afternoon of 
the 3d, when the reinforcements from Mukden began 
to press Kuroki's flank, we saw the Chinese who had 
returned to their houses moving back over the hills 
again. Frequently we have seen coolies nonchalantly 
take risks in order to collect the shells and cartridge 



AFTERMATH 323 

cases for their brass; but not until we were in Liao- 
yang did I see a Chinese who had been injured by 
the fire of either side. 

If you trusted entirely to your eyes, you would 
have thought that the people of Liaoyang were as 
loyal to the Emperor of Japan as those of Tokio. 
There was not a house without a Japanese flag. 
Perhaps there will not be one without a Russian flag 
if the Russians return. However pro- Japanese the 
country folk are, the townspeople are too shrewd to 
commit themselves. I can imagine the sleek mer- 
chant having the alternative always up his sleeve to 
fling to the breeze in front of his shop while he bars 
the door. The Chinese of the worthless type set out 
to loot their own town; but the new masters made 
short work of these gentry. They strung up a few by 
their pigtails in the street. The Japanese army is too 
exacting a machine to be easy-going in anything. 
With thievery it is wholly impatient. Petty larceny 
has become quite out of fashion along the routes of 
march of all three armies. 

Little effect of fire was visible within the walls 
themselves. Many of the Chinese casualties occurred 
in the suburbs. Within forty-eight hours, when a 
battalion of the Fourth Army had settled into occu- 
pation, while the Chinese police gtill napped on th§ 



324 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

street corners, there was a Japanese sentry at every 
gate and a few of them patrolling the streets, where 
every shop was open and the people were going and 
coming as usual about their business. I spoke with 
one Chinese merchant and asked him what he thought 
was the main difference between the Russians and the 
Japanese. 

''The Japanese are very quiet and the Russians are 
very gay," he said. 

That, indeed, outside of size and color, is the es- 
sentially superficial contrast between the army that 
had gone and the army that had come. One who 
knew his Russia and the ways of Russian officers 
felt this most of all when he went among the ruins 
of the Russian quarter, where, for a week after our 
arrival, the smoke from the burning piles of grain 
which had been deserted made a haze around the base 
of the pagoda tower. 

The famous railroad station was a wreck from fire 
and shells. Its restaurant had been the meeting- 
point of Russian officers for many months. Enough 
vodka and champagne had been drunk within its 
walls to ruin any army except the Russian. Kuro- 
patkin, his own inspector-general and scout, I was 
told, had caused the posting of a notice here that no 
officer was to stop except he was leaving or waiting 



AFTERMATH 325 

for a train or had business to transact. The big- 
roomed houses with their bare walls were as char- 
acteristic of a big people, first of all, as little rooms 
with decorations were characteristic of those who had 
come in place of the old masters. All the buildings 
seemed solidly made; everything about the Russian 
quarter gave the lie to Russian treaty promises. 
Their big stoves spoke of genial warmth in mid- 
winter, while the samovar hissed on the table and 
the piles of cigarette ends rose around the tea glasses 
like the parapet of an earthwork. 

There was a modernity in the Russian quarter in 
contrast to the Chinese quarter that could not be 
resisted. These houses, as well as the railway and 
the sidings, belonged to our world. They stood for 
progress in China — progress which ended at the door- 
steps. The streets of this plot of Europe set down 
in the Orient told the story of people who were accus- 
tomed to walk. There was no paving and no flags. 
Mud was knee-deep. 

It was only a few nights before that drunken song 
had risen from the beer garden. The garden be- 
longed to a Greek, I was told. On the nights of 
August 30th and 31st, when the Japanese infantry 
were creeping closer and closer and with sleepless 
acumen were watching for a break in the Russian 



326 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

lines, many Russian officers, it is said, returned to 
Liaoyang and drank, and hugged and kissed one 
another, and then rode back at dawn. On the 
second morning they found their Hne broken. The 
Greeks and the Armenians and the women and all 
the paraphernalia of mediceval existence had passed 
on up the railroad toward Harbin; while the only 
camp followers that the new army had, exclusive of 
the regularly appointed canteen men (who sell beer 
but not sake), were the attaches and the foreign 
correspondents. While the enemy's rearguard was 
making for the bridges, Russian soldiers, who had 
remained to loot the wineshops of the Russian quar- 
ter, fell back before the Japanese advance in drunken 
panic, firing wildly. On the morning of the 6th, 
Chinese were still dragging their bodies out of the 
moat for burial. 

The pattern army of programmes settled into its 
new position as quietly as an army of church deacons, 
decorated with a Japanese smile. In the house 
where the Grand Duke Boris had lived during his 
short and stagey career at Liaoyang, before Kuro- 
patkin sent him and the girls back to Russia, a flag 
and a sentry informed the passer-by of the presence of 
Oyama and his staff. Here I met General Fukushi- 
ma, whom I had first known on the China campaign. 



AFTERMATH 327 

We had a chat and a glass of Russian claret together. 
Tanaka, the aide to Kodama and Fukushima, was 
also there. It was he who was the buffer between 
the correspondents and the staff in the early days in 
Tokio — the tireless, smiling, diplomatic Tanaka — 
now bronzed by exposure to the Manchurian sun. 
In that time of our impatience, Fukushima had said 
more than once: ^* Never mind; you'll see plenty of 
fighting." I had come to tell him that I had seen 
a skirmish, at least, and also to remind him of our 
parting at Peking four years before after another 
fortnight's terrible strain, when I told him that I was 
going to Harbin with him some day. 

The rooms of the adjoining buildings were full 
of the boxes, innocent-looking little Japanese boxes, 
which contained the records of the staff, which is 
simply a big, movable business office, keeping ten or 
fifteen miles behind the army. The correspondents, 
however they may complain, saw the battle a great 
deal better than Oyama himself. While the line was 
engaged around Liaoyang, the minds directing the 
army were hardly within sound of the guns. 

Fukushima is one of the engineers, not one of the 
men on the bridge. He is the second to Kodama, 
as Kodama is to Oyama. The correspondents have 
come under his direction, and officially he is the 



328 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

author of all their troubles. He is an old hand at 
diplomacy as well as war. Since we had the glass 
of Russian claret together I have wondered if he was 
displeased that many correspondents hurried to the 
cable offices in China, beyond the censor's control, 
and sent messages to show that the Japanese had 
suffered a moral defeat at Liaoyang. If their opin- 
ions had anything to do with forming the conviction 
of the Grand Dukes and Alexieff, which led to the 
disastrous Russian effort to retake Liaoyang, with 
the loss of fifty thousand men that followed, then 
these correspondents had played a mighty stroke for 
Japan. 

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I was not surprised — in an army where detail 
filters into high places — to have him say that he had 
heard that one of the correspondents had been lost. 
This was ''Jimmy" Hare, who is a famous man in 
Manchuria. I was looking for "Jimmy" myself. 
We had campaigned together for five months. The 
last I had seen him was on the night of the 31st. 
''Jimmy" is not tall. In Manchuria he has grown 
a beard that fairly ambushes him. With a horse that 
is sixteen hands high and an American saddle, as he 
emerged from a field of kowliang only nice discrim- 
ination by a Japanese skirmish line would save him. 



AFTERMATH 329 

"I'm a photographer and I'm out here to deHver 
the goods," he told the staff. ^'I might as well set 
my camera up on Broadway and point it toward 
Manchuria as to be five miles away from a fight." 

When ^' Jimmy" on the night of the 31st saw that 
our Second Division was marching across the Taitse, 
he concluded that he did not want to get out of 
sight of the old pagoda tower till Liaoyang fell. The 
Fourth Army had no correspondents, and "Jimmy" 
attached himself to the Fourth's right wing when it 
swung in toward the town. He was the first of us 
to enter. From the correspondents of the Second 
Army I heard of him, but just where he was no one 
knew. I was about to sit down to dinner when 
Kobayashi appeared at the doorway in the twilight, 
with his quizzical face knotted into a smile. He 
worked his hat brim in his fingers and said: 

"All right. Mr. Hare he get good place to sleep 
and plenty to eat. Very good to have plenty to eat. 
Four days catch nothing but eggplant and corn. 
Kobayashi damn near starve." 

"Jimmy" had landed on his feet, as usual; and 
while a campmate was thinking of his comfort, he 
was thinking of a campmate's. I found him in 
the house with the French fathers, comfortable and 
chirpy. No soldier was ever more devoted to his 



330 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

work than ''Jimmy" in getting to the front and ''de- 
livering the goods." There are no decorations for 
correspondents; but if there were, "Jimmy" should 
receive an order of the First Class. 

* * * * * :JJ * 

While we had seen the artillery duel along the 
frontal lines on August 30th and 31st, we had seen 
next to nothing of the work of the infantry. On the 
plain where the harvest of death had been, the Chi- 
nese were beginning to harvest the kowliang. Follow- 
ing the line of barb- wire entanglements, of pits, of 
trenches, and of redoubts about Chusan, only the 
reports of eye-witnesses could convince you that, in 
face of modern rifle-fire, the Japanese infantry could 
have taken them. I was with Kahn at the time that 
I rode over the line. Kahn and Wallace, of the 
Second Army, had taken authority in their own 
hands and found themselves in the thick of the 
fighting. 

"But they couldn't have gone through!" I kept 
repeating. 

" But they did," he replied. "I saw them." 

Facing Chusan, in the very heart of the line, was 
a redoubt. Behind the parapet the Japanese had 
gathered ten bushels of Russian cartridge cases. 
These were the fruits of the fire which had been sent 



AFTERMATH 331 

over a zone of fifteen hundred yards in front, where 
the kowliang, except for occasional stalks as markers, 
had been levelled to the ground. It was like advan- 
cing over the levels of a target ground. Beyond the 
redoubt there were barb-wire entanglements ten and 
fifteen yards in breadth. These 'must be cut before 
progress was possible. Next to the parapet itself 
were twenty yards of pits from four to five feet deep, 
each with a sharpened oak stick at the bottom. Pits 
and entanglements extended all the way around the 
work. 

"There didn't seem much use for a redoubt here," 
I said to Kahn, still unconvinced. "The Japanese 
never succeeded in getting through to the side and 
behind this position.'' 

"But they did," he said. 

It was the movement in flank on the left that 
finally forced the Russians to abandon it, however. 
That does not interfere with the fact that the Japan- 
ese did break this line. How was it done ? By the 
same brute courage, used with a fencer's skill, that 
captured and recaptured Hayentai. The tactics 
were the old advance by rushes, which the great 
armies of Europe, contemplating wars fought on 
such a scale as this, have never abandoned. The 
night was the foster mother of success. In the dark- 



332 WITH KUROKT IN MANCHURIA 

ness, with their khaki the color of the ground, 
the Japanese crept up toward the critical point 
in the line, intrenching as they went, while the 
guns and the rest of the infantry gave the support 
of their fire. A dozen men would break from the 
Japanese trench and run as fast as they could. 
If all or half were cut down, the time was not yet 
ripe. 

In this way, by tossing human lives forward as 
boys toss stones on a pond to test the newly formed 
ice for skating, possible points of approach were lo- 
cated. The heroism of sections which had to show 
the way was so frequent as to centre on no one group 
the glory which all deserved. Every yard of closer 
approach meant that the enemy could fire more 
accurately if he kept his nerves. General Nodzu's 
report tells us how his men lay all day unable to 
advance a step. Such work requires the confidence 
of a veteran who is used to seeing the enemy give way 
before his assault. 

The advance into such a position must include no 
thought of falling back. To hug the ground for hour 
upon hour like a man at bay and never once expose 
yourself requires the patience of the Oriental, which 
in the Japanese goes with an aggressive spirit. But 
if there had been no darkness the little men could not 



AFTERMATH 333 

have succeeded. Their lack of nerves even allowed 
them to rest under fire; and when the mid-watches 
found the enemy napping they cast the fortune of the 
battle in a night attack, which the European nations 
had abandoned because of the fear of resultant con- 
fusion. How far the bad marksmanship of the Rus- 
sians was responsible for these marvels which still 
puzzle the foreign world is one of the problems of the 
war. I am yet unconvinced that against good shots 
— against men who do not pour out a stream of 
fire as if quantity alone counted — and a vigilance as 
sharp as their own, the Japanese could have succeeded. 
If they had failed in their frontal attack their num- 
bers were insufficient to have forced their flanking 
movement home. 

If — if! Liaoyang has left its entail of subjunc- 
tives. (If it had not rained at Waterloo; if Meade 
had pursued Lee after Gettysburg!) If Kuropatkin 
could have made use of the gap in our lines ; if Orloff 
had caught Kuroki before he crossed the Taitse. The 
point is, after all, that the Japanese did take Liao- 
yang. Oyama put a strategically important river 
between him and Kuropatkin. His losses in an of- 
fensive action, in which inferior numbers would not 
permit him to punish the enemy by pursuit, were no 
greater than his adversary's. Tactically, Liaoyang 



334 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

was the first battle which the Russians had fought 
— leaving out of the question Stoessel's skilful and 
admirable defence of Port Arthur — without glaring 
tactical blunders. 

Here the whole army was under the eye of its com- 
mander-in-chief. His forces were ample, with equal 
efiiciency, to have repulsed Oyama and crushed Ku- 
roki. But he had not equal efficiency. Realizing 
that he could not depend upon subordinates for this, 
he perforce chose safe, academic methods, which he 
applied so well that he suffered this time no humiliat- 
ing loss of guns or organization in retreat. An ob- 
server on the other side of the line which pressed him 
back could not help feeling that he was the man for 
the thankless task to which he was sent. While he 
was educating his army and driving it to industry, 
he had to fight a cabal of incompetents who endan- 
gered his authority. That handicap alone has won 
sympathy for his personality, though not for his 
cause. 

On these frontal positions there were now none of 
the horrors which we had seen in their freshness at 
Hayentai. The dead of both sides had been buried. 
This great battle had again demonstrated the mercy 
of modern arms. The soldier dies almost imme- 
diately, or science leads him back to health. The 



AFTERMATH 335 

wounded experience none of the suffering of the days 
of grapeshot and large calibre rifles, when antiseptics 
were unknown. For the sights that make you shud- 
der you must see the mangled bodies of a railway 
wreck. 



XXVI 

THE STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 

It is not within the limits of twentieth century 
altruism that forty million people, overcrowded on a 
group of Pacific islands, should devote their blood 
and treasure quite unselfishly toward maintaining 
the integrity of a country which is not loyal to its 
friends and cannot raise a finger to help itself. 
Whenever we think of the military or the naval 
strategy of the campaign we must bear in mind 
Japan's political ambition. Her first thought was 
not China but Korea; and Korea she cannot control 
without command of the sea. 

At the outbreak of the war the combined Port 
Arthur fleet and Vladivostock squadron were equal 
on paper to the Japanese navy. Before a land cam- 
paign might begin, the way for the transports must 
be clear. Yet such was Japan's confidence in her 
arms that she had a division afloat before she had 
fired a shot. Had the Russians shown equal temper, 
Alexiefl would have met Togo off Sasebo and there 

risked all of his men-of-war for the great stake of all 

336 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 337 

the territory in dispute delivered into his hands by 
a single blow. 

While five first-class battleships remained at Port 
Arthur, they were a "fleet in being." The effort, 
gallant as it was, to block the harbor proved futile. 
Had it succeeded, there need have been no attempt 
to reduce the fortification by storm. Time and a 
siege would have done the work. The effective use 
of mines by the Russians in the waters immediately 
around Port Arthur became a more important factor 
than naval experts had anticipated. As Captain 
Mahan pointed out at the time, the torpedoing of 
the Russian fleet off Port Arthur on February 9th 
had a theatricalism which led the public to a false 
conclusion. A United States senator from a sea-coast 
State even proposed that we cease building battle- 
ships and turn our appropriations into torpedo boats. 

Though the Japanese torpedo flotilla, excellently 
manoeuvred, caught the Russian fleet unawares, it 
did not damage any vessel beyond repair. On the 
other hand, three battleships have been destroyed by 
mines. This development has been entirely in favor 
of the defensive force. A battleship, it is true, is a 
vast, expensive piece of mechanism which may be 
sunk by a single charge of dynamite. But battle- 
ships and armored cruisers control the sea; and the 



33^ WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

purpose of a navy is to control the sea and not to hug 
a harbor. An armored cruiser can keep its distance 
and, without injury to itself, batter a protected cruiser 
to pieces. 

The loss of the battleship Hatsuse meant more 
than the loss of a dozen second-class cruisers. It 
made thinking Japan realize upon what a small capi- 
tal the Japanese navy was working. It was not the 
place of Togo or of any professional man to fall into 
the public error that whenever a Russian ship ap- 
peared a Japanese ship could jujitsu it on the spot. 
His position was something the same as the Ameri- 
can board of strategy in the war with Spain when it 
refused to allow the blockading squadron to enter 
the harbor of Santiago, on the excellent ground that 
a battleship might be lost, which was needless as 
long as the Spanish squadron was penned in beyond 
escape. 

Togo had always to realize that his country was in 
the anomalous position of controlling the sea and 
fighting on land against a power the strength of whose 
navy was double that of the Japanese. It was simple 
common-sense for him, so far as possible, to catch the 
units of the Port Arthur fleet in detail, to wear it 
down by siege and blockade, without risk to his own 
fighting ships, which would be preserved to meet the 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 339 

Baltic fleet if it should ever reach the Far East. The 
armored cruisers of the Vladivostock squadron and 
the '^ fleet in being" at Port Arthur have been, so 
far as an outside observer can ascertain, the chief 
sources of worry in high councils in Tokio. 

North of the Korean Straits Japan has by no means 
been in actual control of the sea. The landing of 
troops on the northeast coast of Korea for a descent 
on Vladivostock was out of the question as long as 
the Vladivostock squadron was at liberty. When 
Japan lost two of her best transports under Bezo- 
brazoff' s guns it was a warning of how slight was the 
thread that held her ascendancy at sea. History has 
offered us few finer examples of a commander who 
kept the whole situation in hand, who never allowed 
the natural fighting impulse to outrun reason, than 
Togo, patiently watching, month after month, off 
the Elliot Islands. Probably no navy, no militant 
force whatsoever, has been so well trained for a 
special purpose as his, which boldly undertook to 
make efficiency outweigh circumstances. Should he 
fail, every victory won and every life lost on land 
would be fruitless. 

Once its landings were effected, the work of the 
army has been less the subject of storm and chance 
than that of the navy. Had the Japanese sought 



340 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

solely an early victory over an integral force under 
Kuropatkin, their plan of operations might have 
been different. Here, too, there has been a striking 
mixture of caution and self-confidence. The first 
premise was the military occupation of Korea. This 
— and this alone — was possible at the season when 
war was declared. For the army's purpose April 
would have been a much better month for the dec- 
laration of war. But with the seventh Russian 
battleship, the Oslyabia, on the sea, it was neces- 
sary that hostilities should begin before her arrival. 
Indeed, Japan's political error in not giving Russia 
an ultimatum a year before she did seems now un- 
questioned; for she was in a position then to have 
kept the sea absolutely clear. 

In February and March all the coast of Man- 
churia is icebound. The landing of an army is im- 
possible anywhere from the mouth of the Yalu to the 
mouth of the Liao, which includes the whole sphere 
of possible operations in Manchuria itself. These 
two months before the harbors were open afforded 
invaluable time for Kuropatkin to get a calm grasp 
of the situation, organize his forces and formulate 
plans, and time for the mobilization of all the Sibe- 
rian reservists east of Baikal and the despatch toward 
the frontier of detachments to resist and delay the 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 341 

Japanese. Had the Russians been taken as com- 
pletely by surprise on May ist as they were on Feb- 
ruary 7th, it does not seem wide of the mark to con- 
clude that by the ist of September not only would 
Port Arthur have been in Japanese hands, but a 
Japanese force might have reached Harbin and the 
two idle divisions which remained in Japan through- 
out the summer might have been before Vladivostock. 
Those who would fight battles with torpedo boats 
should bear in mind that the balance of power shifted 
by a single battleship was responsible for this. 

It went without saying that Seoul, the capital of 
Korea, must be occupied in order to secure control 
of the Korean Government. A division of fifteen 
thousand men was fifteen times enough for this pur- 
pose. The public was under the impression at the 
time that the Twelfth was making a race with the 
Russians for Ping Yang. But the Russians had at 
no time two thousand men south of the Yalu and 
there was no question whatsoever of a conflict. No 
more could they have resisted a landing anywhere 
south of the Yalu if the season had permitted it. 
The roads were still almost impassable, thawing un- 
der the sun by day and hardening by frost at night. 

When the Twelfth reached Ping Yang it was joined 
by the other two divisions of the First Army, which 



342 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

marched from Chenampo as soon as that harbor was 
open. This made in all forty-five thousand men. 
Two of the divisions marched two hundred and 
twenty-five miles and one division marched two hun- 
dred and seventy-five miles before they met the enemy 
in anything but a skirmish which did not require the 
strength of a battalion. The Russians brought no 
guns into Korea. They were in no position to make 
even a delaying action. Kuroki was in Korea with 
a large force because the Peking Road was the only 
possible way to reach the Yalu at the season of the 
year. For his purpose, Manchuria had no sea-coast 
in the months of February, March and early April. 
Once the ice at the mouth of the Yalu broke, Antung 
became his base. 

As soon as he was in Manchuria and was proceed- 
ing along the Peking Road toward Liaoyang, with 
only Zassulitch's routed forces ahead of him, the 
Japanese made their lodgment on the Liaotung. 
This was over three months after the declaration of 
war. Kuropatkin himself had been in the East two 
months. He still had Alexieff on his back, but he 
was bringing a certain amount of order out of chaos. 
The new fortifications at Port Arthur were built as 
the result of his and Stoessel's counsels. Port Arthur 
was well provisioned. It had a line of semi-perma- 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 343 

nent fortifications at Kinchow, stretching across the 
neck of the peninsula from sea to sea. Not until 
these were taken could the fortress be said to be con- 
tained, let alone besieged, nor could any Japanese 
force march northward without danger of attack 
from the rear. Putting the stopper into this botde 
was the first act of the army after it was ashore. 
The simply wonderful rapidity with which troops 
were disembarked, the dispositions made and the 
batde fought were important to success in taking a 
frontal position which seemed impregnable. 

The victory of Nanshan was sufficient to have 
turned the head of any army. It led to the splendid 
effort to take Port Arthur by storm instead of by 
an engineering siege. But Stoessel proved that mod- 
ern arms made a permanent fortification safe from 
frontal attack, as expert opinion had long before 
concluded. Port Arthur was worthy a mighty risk. 
Could the fond expectations of its fall in early 
July have been fulfilled, Togo would have had no 
difficulty in destroying the Russian fleet when it was 
forced to a sortie, and the Third Army, with a con- 
tinual stream of reservists filling the breaks in the 
ranks almost as soon as made, would have sent 
Oyama northward with two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand instead of one hundred and fifty thousand men, 



344 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

which wou'd have been sufficient to have forced 
Kuropatkin back to Harbin. This would have 
taken place not in September but early in August, 
at least, which would have left three months in which 
to have approached Harbin itself and waged battle 
there. The fact was clearly demonstrated soon after 
the battle of Nanshan that the failure of the blocking 
attempts to close the harbor and the danger of the 
Baltic fleet must have been compelling factors in 
trying to take the fortress by main force. 

Japan was fortunate in facing an enemy which was 
as completely unprepared for war as any that had ever 
risked war by its pretensions. Yet Russian interests 
in Manchuria were purely military. There was no 
trade except that of supp ying the garrisons. Gigan- 
tic sums had been spent on the harbor of Dalny and 
on the railroad. Officials came to the East for the 
profit which lies between contractor and auditor; 
officers came for profit or because they had not the 
influence or the money to remain at home. Easy- 
going over-confidence and idleness took the place of 
efficiency, both in the army and the navy. The reign- 
ing spirit was that of inflation, with Alexieff as pro- 
moter. 

So carelessly had the defences of the ^' impreg- 
nable" fortress been erected that men-of-war were 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 345 

able to throw shells with impunity into the town. 
As the plunger is under the delusion that stocks will 
keep on rising, so Alexieff was under the delusion 
that the Japanese would not fight. In fatty incom- 
petence he sat tight in his conviction that the little, 
slant-eyed islanders would never dare to beard the 
big white men. After the torpedoing of the Russian 
fleet, if ten thousand men could have landed on the 
Liaotung Peninsula, they probably could have taken 
Port Arthur. At the time, Russia had not more than 
eighty thousand troops all told in Manchuria and 
Eastern Siberia. This was in no professional sense 
an integral army. It was clumsy, headless, un- 
trained; but it was brave and it had good field 
guns. 

The first premise was to hold Port Arthur at all 
costs. Even if this had not been good policy, Alexieff, 
who was still supreme, required it, Port Arthur being 
his pet child. While the Japanese transports had to 
wait on the opening of the harbors, the single line 
railway was measurably as potential in winter as in 
summer. Kuropatkin had to bring troops as fast 
as he could supply them and wait on the Japanese 
to develop their campaign. Wherever they landed 
he must make a show of force. He sent detachments 
into Korea to give the impression that he meant to 



346 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

resist General Kuroki's column before it reached 
Wiju. His own plan, indeed, seems to have been 
clear in his mind from the first. It provided for de- 
laying actions without submitting his main army to 
a decisive battle until he had superior numbers, even 
if he had to fall back on Harbin. 

Meanwhile, he had literally to ^'make" his army 
by developing commanders and bringing line officers 
to a sense of industry. Every day that the Japanese 
delayed the taking of Liaoyang was precious in 
more ways than one to him. The railway problem 
was not merely that of bringing troops. It was easy 
enough to put five hundred thousand men into Liao- 
yang, the difficulty was to feed them. Dependent 
alone upon supplies direct from Russia, he had no 
hope of decisively resisting the Japanese south of 
Harbin. For six months the rich valley of the Liao 
was at his command. Newchwang was open to 
junks from the China coast, which responded freely 
to the argument of high prices. There was not a day 
in all this time when one and sometimes more long 
trains loaded with provisions did not leave New- 
chwang. At Sinmintun, opposite Mukden, over a 
military bridge across the Liao passed a stream of 
carts that tapped the rich country to the westward. 
Herds of cattle were brought from as far away as 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 347 

Mongolia, I am told. Every ton meant a ton saved 
to the railway. 

In the neighborhood of Harbin itself there is less 
produce. With the lower half of the valley of the 
Liao and the sea connection cut off, the Russians 
were without their main source of native supply. 
The Japanese have lived very little off the country. 
They have fed their army largely from home. Their 
commissariat has worked as well as their hospital 
service. They are cautious; they never move until 
they are ready. Indeed, caution may be said to be 
a dominating quality on both sides. This has been 
a war without raids and without brilliant exploits by 
flying detachments. That is not saying that there 
is a lack of the spirit for such things. Japanese line 
officers are full of initiative and suggestions. 

As an army whose parts, acting with automatic 
precision, make an efficient whole, it is questionable if 
the Japanese has ever been equalled. It leaves no 
loopholes of attack; it does its work completely as 
it proceeds. Yet in equipment it is without first- 
class field guns and without suitable horses to draw 
them. However well trained the Japanese cavalry- 
men are, they are heavily handicapped by their 
mounts. The Cossacks have wholly failed to justify 
their reputation. They made a ride through Korea 



348 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

to cut a line of communications which no longer ex- 
isted and were sadly punished by the small garrison 
at Anju. That was the limit of their exploits in 
the first season's campaign. 

Before one says that the Japanese took longer than 
was necessary to close the port of Newchwang as a 
source of Russian supply and to occupy Liaoyang, 
he must understand Japanese policy; he must know 
the plans of the General Staff. Transportation diffi- 
culties largely hindered a more rapid advance. In 
May Kuroki was at Feng-wang-cheng with forty- 
five thousand troops. He could have marched to 
Motien Pass without opposition could he have fed 
his army. Despite Kuroki' s position, owing to 
orders from above, Stakelberg went south to the 
relief of Port Arthur, and met with the disaster at 
Tehlitz, where he was outgeneralled and outfought. 
The folly of this diversion from Kuropatkin's plan 
at that time has been made evident by the prolonged 
resistance of the Port Arthur garrison. If after 
Stakelberg's rout both the First and the Second 
Japanese armies could have moved on Liaoyang, 
it would have been theirs almost for the marching, 
and the southern valley of the Liao would have no 
longer been a Russian granary. 

The Japanese were limited to the highway. They 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 349 

had captured plenty of rolling stock, but no locomo- 
tives. It is said that several broad-gauge locomotives 
(bought specially to draw this rolling stock) were 
on a transport sunk by the Vladivostock squadron. 
At all events, the Japanese were compelled to cut 
down the gauge and bring locomotives from home, 
where they were sadly needed, before they could 
make any use of the railway. '^Why do they wait? 
Why don't the Japanese come?" was the question 
continually asked in Liaoyang after Tehlitz. The 
Japanese, however, kept to their programme. They 
sent three armies by three different roads from 
three different bases to the common centre of Liao- 
yang, where possibly a hundred and fifty thousand 
men on September ist could have done the work no 
better than a hundred thousand could have done it 
in the middle of July. 

In July, Kuropatkin became strong. His Euro- 
pean corps were arriving. On August ist his entire 
force was very nearly equal to the three Japanese 
armies; on September ist, it was unquestionably 
superior. Naturally he made each of the three 
Japanese armies fight its way. This was done un- 
skilfully in every instance. Hamatan was by no 
means the last occasion when the active Japanese 
infantry caught retreating columns in close order 



350 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

from the hillside. At Motien Pass the Russians made 
one attack in reconnoissance on the Japanese and a 
second attack in earnest to recover the pass. Recog- 
nizing that the First Army was on their flank, they 
gave it a great deal of hard fighting. Yet they always 
suffered more casualties than the Japanese, and theirs 
was the loss of morale; while the Japanese came to 
Liaoyang with the utmost confidence. 

It was in July that Kuropatkin sent his famous 
telegram to the Czar that he was at last in a po- 
sition where he hoped to stay our advance. But 
he was never lulled into over-confidence. He had 
come to know the nature of his army and also that 
of the Japanese. His retreat from Liaoyang was 
a masterly piece of Fabian tactics. I would par- 
ticularly insist that it does not raise him at all to the 
standard of another defensive general who retreated, 
foot by foot, from the Wilderness to Appomattox. 
There is, of course, the hypothesis that the Japanese 
wished to hold Kuropatkin at Liaoyang and there 
deliver him a telling blow. My inclination is to think 
that the Japanese had never expected the rapidity 
with which the Russians would be reinforced during 
July and August. Their excellent intelligence ser- 
vice could only report what its spies saw. It could 
not ascertain the plans of the Russian staff or foresee 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 351 

the Russian determination — still hoping to relieve 
Port Arthur — to bring a vast number of men to bear 
at a given time, regardless of permanently supplying 
them. Those who fell in the Russian offensive 
movement at Yentai needed no food. Here, Kuro- 
patkin, no doubt against his will, was drawn on, 
as Stakelberg was, with the same disastrous result. 
The sailor was recalled while the soldier was left to 
repair the damage he had done, and the relief of Port 
Arthur was farther away than ever. 

By working year in and year out eight hours a 
day at his profession, the Japanese officer has set a 
new standard by sea and land. Results have shown 
officers of other armies who look upon their calling 
as the leisurely occupation of gentlemen, that he 
who leaves all to his sergeant-major and neither toils 
nor spins will one day come to such a reckoning as 
Hamatan. Never have hard work and skill played 
such a part in war as to-day. Their importance is 
a great factor for peace, for it makes the weak give 
way without recourse to arms. There are heads of 
nations in Europe to-day who know that the national 
habit has afflicted their forces with the careless- 
ness of the dilettante. The campaign in Man- 
churia has, again, shown that it was no accident 
but a new era which the German General Staff in- 



352 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

augurated in 1870 with the simple gospel of work 
and organization. That plodding, text-book appli- 
cation to detail of the German Army, which still 
excites the smiles of some critics, is a force which 
prime ministers may well gravely consider before 
they advise war. 

"If you work as hard as the Japanese, what is the 
use of living ? You might as well sit on a stool and 
keep accounts," a Russian officer is reported to 
have said. But he is learning that he must work 
if he would win victories. 

In considering the caution — the thrift of strategy, 
it might be called — of the Japanese, it must be borne 
in mind that the loss of guns and equipment is a much 
more serious matter to Japan than to Russia, which 
in her vast home army has an almost inexhaustible 
supply. While the Second Army had Port Arthur 
behind it, there was always the hope that, Alexieff's 
counsel prevailing, the Russians might try to fight 
their way through, as they did try beyond Yentai, 
with the result that the Japanese had desired. An 
army that is thoroughly beaten in an offensive move- 
ment gives the army on the defence, if its losses are 
relatively slight, a great opportunity. No one knows 
that it was the plan of the Japanese staff originally 
to go to Harbin; and, believe me, my comment on 



STRATEGY AND POLITICS OF THE WAR 353 

the campaign is offered with the hesitancy of one 
who has been actually in the field. 

With Port Arthur and Korea in her hands, Japan 
will have the main selfish points of the war. They 
furnish her a striking ground for the mightier con- 
flict that may come in a future generation. Her 
army at home is always literally on the flank of any 
Russian movement in Korea. If Japan takes Har- 
bin, she forces the Russian base back to Irkutsk. 
Vladivostock then must fall of its own weight. Thus 
the war will be ended by a blow. No one at all 
familiar with the situation can, for a moment, ques- 
tion that Russia must maintain an army of five 
hundred thousand men in order to force Japan to 
Kinchow and the borders of Korea. I myself, such 
is my confidence in the Japanese, say that a million 
is nearer the mark. 

If after repeated attempts Russia fails, then from 
sheer exhaustion on both sides peace will come. If 
she succeeds, the line of least resistance for her by 
which she can re-establish her prestige in the East, 
is to swing in flank upon Peking, while Germany 
at Kiauchou and France in southern China will 
not say her nay. England and America cannot run 
their battleships over the plains of Chih-li. The 
limit of their power is the range of their naval guns, 



354 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

unless they land troops. Port Arthur with her harbor 
open to reinforcements and supplies is an impreg- 
nable fortress. Russia cannot take Port Arthur or 
Korea with Japan in command of the sea. If Eng- 
land and the United States are so far negligent of 
their selfish interests as ever to permit Japan to lose 
command of the sea, England will no longer be a 
power in the Far East and the United States might 
as well cede her Pacific coast to Mexico so far as 
trade or influence on the eastern shores of the Pacific 
are concerned. Russia's pride is bitten deep. She 
will have no honest truce with the Anglo-Saxons now. 
Our course is clear. 



XXVII 

SAYONARA 

When I left Liaoyang on September loth, no one 
thought that an enemy which had been driven out of 
a strong defensive position v^ould be ordered, on the 
advice of a sailor, to play into Japanese hands by 
throwing itself on the bayonets of its victorious foe, 
in the desperate movement which cost the Russians 
fifty thousand casualties between Yentai and the 
Sha River. The first stage of the war seemed at 
an end. With five months of campaigning behind 
me, on the back of my good pinto pony I said say- 
onara (farewell) to the staff of the First Army and 
started for Newchwang. 

The railway as far as Tashikao, though intact, was 
without traffic as yet, while along the highway the 
native carts passed in sluggish current. The stations 
were occupied by the transport corps; the plat- 
forms were piled with Japanese stores. In the land 
of the Chinese, who looked on and had nothing at 
all to say about it, the little men had driven the big 
men out of their new buildings and made themselves 

355 



356 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

perfectly at home. To the artistic eye of the little 
men, the untilled. bare yards of the Russian settle- 
ments stood for utter barbarity. It made them 
realize how beautiful their homeland is. The Rus- 
sian is as strange to the Japanese as the Japanese is 
to the Russian, but not quite as strange as both are 
to the Chinese. 

From Tashikaoto New chwang the Japanese cool- 
ies were busy changing the gauge of the railway. 
With the Russians, this is above the standard; with 
the Japanese, it is below. When you have set one 
rail over so that it is only three feet six inches instead 
of five feet from the other and you cut off the end 
of the ties, there is no need of ripping up the road 
if you have to retreat, for the Russians themselves 
will have to do that before they can lay new ties. 
There are advantages in being small and in living 
in little islands, where you economize in land for 
the sake of your garden plots. 

At Newchwang — well, at Newchwang is Henry 
R. Miller. The last Americans I had seen were 
the good missionaries at Ping Yang and the next was 
the good consul at Newchwang. In troublous times, 
with Russian, Japanese, and Chinese, influences at 
work. Miller has held the course of wisdom without 
offence to racial prejudices and time on time has 



SAYONARA 357 

gained his point. This, I beheve, is diplomatic suc- 
cess. I hope that the President and the Secretary 
of State will read these lines, if for no other reason 
than that they will realize the earnestness of a citizen 
who has seen many bad consuls in singing the praise 
of one good one. Your national pride suffers some 
severe shocks when you meet some of the men (and 
hear of their doings) who live under the flag in China 
coast ports. 

Newchwang is not a pleasant place to live. It 
is a Chinese town on the soft earth bank of a muddy 
river, where the foreigners have no concession and 
their houses stand among those of the natives, and 
life is bearable only because of good fellowship and 
grouse-shooting on the marshes. Here, as elsewhere, 
the Russians, at the railway terminal, which is a half 
mile away from the town, gave an earnest of their 
intention to evacuate Manchuria by many permanent 
buildings, which the Japanese now occupy as land- 
ing depots. Newchwang has been too near the front 
to be as prolific of rumors as Chefoo, but she has 
given the world enough fakes, recorded and unre- 
corded, to fill many morning editions. On the other 
side of the river the correspondent is in neutral 
territory, where he may send as many cables as he 
pleases. 



358 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

In the early days of parlous uncertainty, when 
Alexieff was master one day and Kuropatkin the 
next, the Russians dragged siege guns through New- 
chwang and then dragged them back; they concluded 
to resist a landing and then concluded they would not. 
When the Second Army took Tashikao, the port's 
fate was sealed. A few hours after the Russians de- 
parted, a Japanese non-commissioned officer with 
some troopers rode through the streets, and found 
himself a hero among the English and American 
residents. Newchwang immediately became one of 
the bases. Every incoming transport brings its quota 
of reservists in their fresh winter jackets, which 
seemed stagey and unreal to one who had just come 
from a veteran army clad in stained khaki. 

I returned to Japan on such a ship as I went to 
Korea, an inter-island steamer now in the service of 
the government. That four days' voyage spanned 
as sharp a contrast as any in the world. From the 
train window in the rail journey northward from 
Shimonoseki I looked out upon the year's rice crop 
ripening; upon a land cultivated to the doorways 
and to the hilltops, when the hilltops were not growing 
pine or bamboo. Again in touch with your familiar 
Japan, you felt more than ever the Japanese point 
of view in the struggle of these overcrowded islands 



SAYONARA 359 

against a country that has more land than she can 
develop for a thousand years. Working in the fields 
were men in kimonos and getas who to-morrow might 
step into blouse and boots and march away to battle. 
Productive industry — for no Japanese ever seems 
idle — came as a relief after the purely destructive 
processes of war. Over the straw-thatched cottages 
whose shiny mats you saw through nearby windows, 
floated the Sun Goddess's flag. Every local resident 
knew which cottage had sent a son to Manchuria; 
which had had a son die there. On the down track 
were train-loads of reservists, eager and happy. On 
the up track were trains with the wounded, out of 
blouses and boots into wool cloaks and sandals. At 
certain stations volunteer nurses administered to the 
comfort of the heroes with the affection of their pa- 
triotism. No newcomer would have thought that 
these gentle, soft-spoken women could bear a race of 
Spartan courage and hardihood. 

Outside of the flags, which are up until the war 
ends, and the coming of the wounded and the going 
of fresh troops, you saw the Japan of peace time. 
Only three hundred thousand men, out of a popula- 
tion of forty-five million (with five hundred thousand 
excess of births over deaths), had been withdrawn 
from industry. The others were busy in workshop 



360 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

and farm or going to school. In Tokio all the new 
tram lines were running; the building across from the 
Imperial Hotel was completed; the foundations of 
others had been laid since my departure in April. 
The increased taxes were being paid without com- 
plaint by the well-to-do and the poor alike. No- 
where did I see signs of reaction. Still the nation 
smiled; still it did not gesticulate. This people had 
not entered upon war from impulse. War had 
meant no plaything of popular passion of which they 
might tire. They knew from the beginning that it 
was to be the work of more than one summer. 

The cost is great. That was expected ; that is a 
part of the risk. Japan is poor. A brigadier-general 
gets scarcely the pay of a first-class clerk at home. 
In all the islands the army does not possess a single 
building as costly or as imposing as a State armory 
which I pass frequently on Fourteenth Street. The 
limitations of its purse may well teach the staff the 
value of the great wealth of an England or an America 
in buying guns and equipment and supplies. This 
war is fought on flesh and blood and self-denial and 
skill. But in a land that feeds its own troops largely, 
when confidence is supreme, funds must be forth- 
coming. 

Ordinarily, the mortgage on the customs for a for- 



SAYONARA 361 

eign loan would have sent a cabinet flying out of 
office. Now the necessity is resignedly accepted by 
this proud people. The days of peace when the 
genius of the nation shall turn to the development 
of Korea will bring the prosperity which will be a 
lasting memorial to those who fell. Then the 
parliament will again have fervid debates and pub- 
lic discussion will resume its old place. For this 
is a land of constitutionalism; a land in which you 
may travel without a passport; in the streets of 
whose towns a woman is safe at night. If Japan has 
brought any message to the world, it is that a consti- 
tutional government kept clean by criticism, which 
centres authority in a crisis, is a better war machine 
than an autocracy kept foul by suppression, which is 
of many minds in a crisis. 

Though Japan wins, Russia must win also, if there 
be in her people the strength and the somnolent prog- 
ress with which they are credited. She needed a war 
to open the festers of official corruption and incom- 
petency; to lift up the Kuropatkins and dismiss the 
Alexieffs; to bring out the heroism of her priests at 
Hamatan and change the customs and ideals of her 
line officers ; and to lay the foundation for those popu- 
lar prerogatives which are the test of a modern civ- 
ilized State. Medicine will not always do; war is the 



362 WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

surgeon that performs major operations. Those who 
shout loudest for universal peace may be promot- 
ing a form of death that is far worse than any form 
you will see in Manchuria. 

As our steamer passed out of Yokohama harbor, 
many lights twinkled on the water. It was the night 
of a bon matsuri — a festival for the dead. Tiny 
boats bearing food for the departed were being set 
adrift on the floodtide. Some of these must travel 
far: to Togo's fleet, to the fortresses around Port 
Arthur, to the armies of Kuroki, Oku, and Nodzu. 
If the givers could follow their gifts they would find 
that their beloved dead had fallen in a manner 
worthy of a people who mask their sacrifices with a 
smile. 



By FREDERICK PALMER 

j'jtk Thousand 

THE VAGABOND 

Illustrated by Harrison Fisher 
i2mo, $1.50 

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and strong character, and it is interesting to read 
about him. Love, plot, and the strenuous work of 
glory — these are here, not in too tremendous fash- 
ion, as the case sometimes is with our war stories, 
but in a fashion reasonable and controlled. The 
reader will like it." — The New York Sun, 

'' There is a new ring in ' The Vagabond.' It 
gets away from the ordinary type. It is-out of the 
common, above mediocre, very well worth while. 
Again — the best criticism of it is the advice — read 
it." — The 'Journal^ Indianapolis^ Ind, 

" Peculiarly fresh and invigorating." 

— Liverpool {Eng,) Mercury. 

" The ' vagabond ' hero is a very engaging youth 
in all the stages of his career ; his straightforward 
ingenuousness makes friends for him both within 
and without the book, and serves him far better 
than either subtlety or craft would have done." 

— The Dial, 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK 



By FREDERICK PALMER 

THE VAGABOND 

Illustrated. i2mo. $1.50 

" The story, as a whole, is invigorating, clean, 
and taintless as the mountain air for which its hero 
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is contented to exhibit them as they are." 

— Manchester Guardian. 

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in the best American." 

— Manchester (^Eng.^ Guardian. 

" A good story from start to finish, with vitality, 
vigor, and action enough for three books of the 
average type." — Louisville Courier-'Journal. 

" Revives the flagging interest of the jaded 
reader and convinces him that there are yet stories 
worth reading in the world." 

— Gazette^ Birmingham. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK 



By FREDERICK PALMER 

'jth Thousand 

THE WAYS OF THE 
SERVICE 

Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy 
i2mo, $1.50 

" Almost am I persuaded you, too, must be a 
regular — so accurate is every detail. I have read 
and reread it- — and sent it to others who read — 
and the verdict is the same. It's the best yet." 

— General Charles King, 

*' Mr. Palmer has made a volume of such read- 
able stories that no one who opens it will leave it 
unfinished." — The Nation. 

" We do not hesitate to say that ' The Ways 
of the Service ' is the best book of American war 
stories written in late years." — Boston 'Journal. 

" A book to entertain and to delight ; a book 
that will be found to be of absorbing interest and 
no little beauty." — Louisville Times. 

" Eight exceptionally bright, strong, entertaining 
stories. The author gives a lifelike description 
of the beings and doings of certain cliques in our 
armv and navy in the Far East." 

— Philadelphia Telegraph. 



By FREDERICK PALMER 

IN THE KLONDYKE 

INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF A 
WINTER'S JOURNEY TO DAWSON 

With many Illustrations 
i2mo, $1.50 

*' Mr. Palmer has made a sensible and interest- 
ing book. His pictures of life on the trail, at 
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reality and infused with local color. His story in- 
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on any trail." — The Nation. 

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ready idea of how the pioneers in the northern gold 
fields lived and worked and enjoyed." 

— Chicago Evening Post, 

" An exceedingly entertaining volume." 

— Boston Advertiser, 

" The book has all the attractive qualities of a 
novel of adventure." — The Outlook. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK 



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